iftl 


M^9. 


3  =1153  D13D5^^tD  h 


CHARLES  STEWART  PARNELL. 


IRELAND  OF  TO-DAY 


THE  CAUSES  AND  AIMS  OF 
IRISH  AGITATION 

BY 

M.   F.  SULLIVAN 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION 

BY 

THOMAS  POWER   O'CONNOR,   M.P. 


I  have  thought,  if  I  could  be  in  all  other  things  the  same,  but  by  birth  an 
Irishman,  there  is  not  a  town  in  this  island  I  would  not  visit  for  the  purpose 
of  discussing  the  great  Irish  question,  and  of  rousing  my  countrymen  to  sc  tn« 
great  and  united  action.— John  Bright,  Dublin,  Nov.  a,  1866. 


C.    McCURDY  &   CO., 


PHILADELPHIA,  PA.;  CINCINNATI,  O. ;   CHICAGO,  ILL. 
ST.  LOUIS.  MO. 


Copyright, 
M.  Stoddart  &  Co.- 
i88t. 


PUBLISHERS'  NOTE. 


The  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  present  a  popular, 
convenient  and  correct  account  of  the  causes  and 
aims  of  Irish  agitation.  The  intimate  relations  which 
exist  between  the  United  States  and  England  on  the 
one  hand,  and  between  the  United  States  and  Ireland 
on  the  other,  make  a  concise,  impartial  and  complete 
manual  a  necessity  for  all  who  desire  to  inform  them- 
selves on  the  issue  which  is  being  so  vigorously- 
fought  at  the  present  time  between  the  English 
government  and  the  masses  of  the  Irish  people. 

Without  going  too  remotely  into  the  history  of 
the  country — its  mythical  and  fabulous  period  not  be- 
ing touched  at  all — the  reader  will  find  in  these  pages 
ample  information  concerning  the  land  laws  and  cus- 
toms, evictions,  "boycotting,"  agrarian  crime,  man- 
ufactures, revolutionary  movements,  coercion  laws, 
penal  laws,  parliamentary  history,  education,  etc.,  in 

Ireland ;  while  especial  attention  is  paid  to  the  im- 

17 


l8  PUBLISHERS'   NOTE. 

mediate  causes  leading  to  the  organization  of  the 
Land  League,  its  growth,  operations  and  principles, 
with  authentic  biographies  of  its  leaders,  up  to  the 
time  of  its  attempted  suppression  by  the  English 
government  and  the  arrest  and  imprisonment  of  its 
foremost  advocates.  All  the  facts  stated  and  statis- 
tics quoted  are  from  standard  authorities. 

The  portion  which  treats  of  the  establishment  of 
peasant  proprietary  in  other  European  countries  will 
be  found  particularly  curious  and  valuable;  while 
the  description  of  the  home-life  of  the  Irish  cottier- 
farmer,  who  held  his  little  farm  from  day  to  day  at 
the  will  of  his  landlord,  from  whom  he  had  no  lease 
and  who  could  raise  his  rent  a  dozen  times  a  day  if 
he  so  chose,  will  be  found  a  social  picture  without  a 
parallel  in  any  other  part  of  the  globe. 

The  advantages  of  the  Land  Acts  of  1870  and 
1 88 1  are  fairly  and  fully  presented.  The  illustrations 
include  portraits  of  the  principal  leaders  of  the  agita- 
tion, with  scenes  and  places  prominently  identified 
with  it 


INTRODUCTION. 

By  THOMAS   POWER  O'CONNOR,  M.  P. 


FOR  good  or  ill,  the  Irish  question  is  ev- 
idently destined  to  occupy  for  some  time 
to  come  a  prominent  place  in  public  attention. 
All  indications  point  to  the  probability  of  the 
present  generation  seeing  the  close  in  some 
form  or  other  of  the  struggle  between  Eng- 
land and  Ireland,  which  has  been  fought  with 
such  varying  fortunes  and  in  so  many  differ- 
ent forms  for  so  many  centuries.  At  all 
events,  the  Irish  people  have  reached  the 
point  when  they  are  convinced  that  they  are 
going  to  win  back  their  national  rights.  Under 
such  circumstances,  the  Irish  problem  will  be 
forced  upon  the  notice  of  all  men ;  and  it  be- 
comes a  matter  of  necessity  to  know  some- 
thing  of  the  questions   which  underlie  that 


19 


20  INTRODUCTION, 

problem.  An  American  can  least  of  all  men 
avoid  the  discussion  of  the  subject.  A  con- 
siderable portion  of  his  fellow-citizens  are 
Irish  by  birth ;  a  still  more  considerable  por- 
tion are  Irish  by  descent;  and,  of  recent 
years,  the  battle  of  the  Irish  people  at  home 
has  been  fought  with  resources  largely  drawn 
from  the  Irish  settled  on  the  American  con- 
tinent. 

Under  such  circumstances,  it  is  more  than 
ever  opportune  that  the  public  should  be 
placed  in  possession  of  the  real  issues  at 
stake  in  this  great  struggle.  Unfortunately, 
much  as  has  been  written,  and  as  is  written 
daily,  on  Irish  subjects,  the  acquisition  of  the 
real  merits  of  the  case  is  far  from  easy.  It  is 
one  of  the  disadvantages  of  the  Irish  people 
in  this  struggle  that  the  history  is  told  to  the 
world  by  their  enemies,  for  the  English  news- 
paper or  journal  or  history  is  the  authority 
which  the  mass  of  mankind  accepts,  and  is 
obliged  to  accept.  London  publishes  some 
of  the   greatest   newspapers   of  the   world; 


INTRODUCTION,  21 

the  Times  has  an  international  as  well  as  a 
national  circulation,  while  the  Irish  news- 
papers are  rarely  heard  of  out  of  Ireland,  and 
are  not  known  even  by  name  by  the  majority 
of  the  English-speaking  people.  Thus,  by 
a  singular  fatality,  the  press — in  which,  as  a 
rule,  all  causes  find  hearing,  if  not  advocacy — 
is  closed  to  everything  on  the  side  of  the 
Irish  people,  and — worse  than  this — closed 
while  it  seems  to  be  open. 

Nor  is  ignorance  of  the  real  history  of  Ire- 
land confined  to  those  who  are  not  Irish.  It 
is  an  essential  part  of  the  English  system  of 
rule  in  Ireland  to  suppress  all  study  of  Irish 
history  in  Irish  educational  institutions.  No 
discussion  of  the  events  of  Irish  history 
from  the  Irish  point  of  view  is  contained  in 
any  of  the  governmental  school-books ;  not 
a  word  is  allowed  to  be  spoken  on  Irish  his- 
tory from  the  Irish  point  of  view  in  the 
queen's  colleges,  which  are  supported  by 
governmental  endowment;  and  thus  the 
strange    state   of    things    is    brought   about 


22  INTRODUCTION. 

that,  even  among  educated  Irishmen,  an  inti- 
mate acquaintance  with  the  smallest  details 
of  English  history  often  exists  side  by  side 
with  almost  absolute  ignorance,  even  of  the 
leading  events  in  the  history  of  Ireland.  The 
knowledge  of  Irish  history  which  an  Irish- 
man attains  he  gains  outside  his  school  and 
without  the  assistance  of  his  schoolmaster. 

And  when  the  Irishman  does  set  himself 
to  the  study  of  the  history  of  Ireland,  he  finds 
immense  difficulties  in  his  way.  There  have 
been  innumerable  works  on  Ireland — many 
of  them  very  able — but  the  history  of  Ireland 
has  yet  to  be  written.  What  is  required  in 
the  Irish  history  of  the  future  is  that  the 
story  should  be  told  in  unexaggerated  and 
calm  language.  The  facts  require  no  color- 
ing, and  the  conclusions  no  forcing:  the  for- 
mer can  be  allowed  to  stand  in  their  simplic- 
ity, and  the  latter  are  inevitable  to  any  ration- 
al mind. 

I  have  read  the  work  to  which  these  few 
words  are  a  preface,  and  I  find  a  clear  and 


INTRODUCTION.  23 

honest  setting-forth  of  the  past  and  present 
of  the  Irish  question.  The  writer  puts  the 
case  in  a  simple,  straightforward  and  practi- 
cal way,  and  any  intelligent  person  who  reads 
these  pages  will  have  an  accurate  idea  of  the 
struggle  of  the  hour.  Many  of  the  most 
popular  fallacies  with  regard  to  Ireland  her- 
self and  the  acts  and  objects  of  her  present 
advocates  are  met  by  undisputed  facts  and 
figures ;  the  series  of  historic  events  are 
traced  which  have  led  to  the  long-delayed 
but  inevitable  reckoning  between  the  Irish 
landlord  and  the  Irish  tenant  which  the 
world  sees  to-day;  and  the  demands  of  the 
Irish  people  on  the  questions  of  education 
and  self-government  are  treated  lucidly  and 
with  moderation. 

The  work  is  indeed  a  storehouse  of  facts 
and  argument,  and  will,  I  believe,  do  much 
toward  making  the  Irish  question  better  un- 
derstood, and  the  motives  and  objects  of 
the  Irish  people  more  justly  appreciated. 


CONTENTS 


••AGB 

E*UBLiSHERs'  Note 17 

Preface.   By  Thomas  Power  O'Connor 19 

What  is  this  Irish  Question  ? *, 27 

CHAPTER  I. 
Ireland  prior  to  the  Land  War 33 

CHAPTER  II. 
How  the  People  lost  the  Land 40 

CHAPTER  III. 
The  Reason  Ireland  has  no  Manufactures 58 

CHAPTER  IV. 
How  the  People  lost  their  Parliament 79 

CHAPTER  V. 
A  Lettered  Nation  reduced  by  Force  and  Law  to  Illit- 
eracy     * no 

CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Irish  Tenant  To-Day 136 

25 


26  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

PAGB 

The  Peasant- Farmer  in  Other  Countries 153 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
Peculiar  Features  of  Irish  Landlordism 183 

CHAPTER  IX. 
The  Landlords  sow  the  Seed  of  the  Land  League  .   .   .    237 

CHAPTER  X. 
The  Men  who  Gathered  the  Crop 304 

CHAPTER  XI. 
A  Peaceful  and  Constitutional  Movement 362 

CHAPTER  XII. 
A  Landlord's  Agent  goes  into  the  Dictionary 389 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
Driven  from  Home  by  Famine  and  Law 395 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
Liberty  and  Crime  in  Ireland 403 

CHAPTER  XV. 
The  Land  Laws 411 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
What  is  the  End  to  be  ?    = 441 

Ind£x 453 


WHAT  IS  THIS  IRISH  QUESTION  ? 


This:  England  and  Ireland  are  members 
of  the  British  empire.  They  are  supposed 
to  enjoy  alike  the  benefits  of  the  British  con- 
stitution ;  those  benefits  are  administered  to 
both  by  the  same  personal  government.  But 
England  is  the  richest,  Ireland  the  poorest, 
country  in  the  empire.  England's  population 
has  continually  increased ;  Ireland's  has  con- 
tinually diminished.  Englishmen  prefer  to 
live  in  their  native  country:  emigration  has 
been  only  a  trivial  incident  in  their  national 
history;  Irishmen  prefer  to  live  in  their 
native  country,  yet  there  are  four  times  as 
many  of  them  in  foreign  countries  as  in 
their  own :  with  them  emigration  has  been 
a  chronic  national  necessity.  England  hums 
with  manifold  industries ;  Ireland's  vast  water- 

2  27 


2S  WHAT  IS  THIS  IRISH  QUESTION f 

power,  capable  of  turning  the  machinery  of 
the  world,  is  silent.  England's  wharves  are 
forests  of  masts ;  Ireland's  beautiful  harbors 
are  empty  except  when  the  English  ship 
carries  away  the  products  of  her  soil.  In 
England  famine  is  unknown,  although  she 
has  to  import  food;  in  Ireland  famine  is 
frequent,  although  she  exports  food  enough 
to  feed  her  entire  population. 

In  England  the  proportion  of  voters  to  the 
male  population  is  one  in  four ;  in  Ireland  it 
is  one  in  twenty-four.  England,  the  richest, 
is  the  most  lightly-taxed,  portion  of  the 
empire;  Ireland,  the  poorest,  is  the  most 
heavily  taxed.  In  England  there  is  liberty 
of  conscience  and  education ;  in  Ireland  a 
charter  has  been  refused  to  the  only  univer- 
sity in  which  four-fifths  of  her  students  can 
conscientiously  seek  degrees.  England  per- 
mits Scotchmen  to  shape  imperial  legislation 
for  Scotland  and  appoints  only  Scotchmen 
to  office  in  Scotland ;  the  representatives  of 
Ireland  in  the  imperial  Parliament  are  never 


WHAT  IS  THIS  IRISH  QUESTION?  29 

consulted  about  legislation  for  that  country, 
and  the  government  offices  there  are  filled 
with  Englishmen  and  Scotchmen.  England 
governs  Scotland  by  her  sons  and  in  kind- 
ness ;  England  governs  Ireland  by  her  en- 
emies and  in  hatred. 

In  proportion  to  population,  there  is  much 
more  crime  of  all  kinds  committed  in  Scot- 
land and  England  than  in  Ireland ;  yet  the 
suspension  of  habeas  corpus  is  not  attempted 
in  those  countries.  In  eighty  years  fifty-nine 
savage  coercion  bills,  by  which  personal  liberty 
has  been  extinguished,  have  been  inflicted  on 
Ireland.  England  gives  to  all  her  other 
dependencies  geographically  separated  from 
her  the  right  to  make  their  domestic  laws  on 
their  own  soil — home  rule ;  England  de- 
stroyed the  Parliament  of  Ireland  and  denies 
her  home  rule. 

Why? 

To  answer  these  questions  this  book  was 
written. 


IRELAND  OF  TO-DAY. 


CHAPTER    I. 
IRELAND  PRIOR   TO   THE  LAND    WAR. 

IRELAND  has  an  area  of  twenty  million  acres. 
It  is  about  three-fifths  the  size  of  Illinois  or 
Iowa,  a  little  more  than  one-third  the  size  of 
Oregon,  not  one-third  the  size  of  Colorado.  It 
would  not  cover  one-fifth  of  California.  Its  pop- 
ulation is  five  millions.  The  country  being  almost 
entirely  devoid  of  manufactures,  the  population  must 
live  by  the  land.  They  have  not,  however,  twenty 
million  acres  to  live  upon :  six  million  acres  are 
waste-land.  Five  million  people  must  live,  there- 
fore, on  and  by  fourteen  million  acres  of  land.  The 
land  must  feed  them,  clothe  them,  house  them, 
educate  them. 

But  they  do  not  own  the  land.  They  are  simply 
a  nation  of  tenants  engaged  in  farming ;  and  the 
nature  of  their  tenantry  for  centuries  has  been  such 
that  the  land  could  not  feed,  clothe,  house  or 
educate  them.  The  land  is  owned  largely  by  per- 
sons whose  title,  however  perfect  legally  while  the 

33 


34        IRELAND  PRIOR    TO    THE  LAND  WAR. 

country  is  forcibly  ruled  by  the  vast  power  of  the 
British  empire,  originated  in  confiscation  or  in  fraud ; 
and  these  persons  do  not,  as  a  rule,  reside  upon  their 
estates.  They  live  in  England  or  on  the  Continent 
the  greater  part  of  every  year.  They  draw  enor- 
mous rents  from  the  estates  and  invest  or  spend  the 
money  abroad.     None  of  it  returns  to  Ireland. 

For  centuries  it  was  the  privilege  of  the  Irish 
landlords  to  regulate  the  rent  of  land  in  Ireland  as 
they  pleased ;  they  could  increase  it  as  often  as  they 
pleased,  and  could,  whenever  they  pleased,  expel 
the  tenant  from  the  farm  he  tilled,  whether  he  paid 
his  rent  or  not.  As  there  was  no  other  occupation 
for  him  to  engage  in,  and  as  the  rent  he  had  been 
required  to  pay  was  so  excessive  that  he  could  not 
save  any  money  to  procure  another  farm,  he  and  his 
family  were  commonly  compelled  to  seek  the  poor- 
house  or  to  die  of  want  on  the  highways. 

Americans  should  understand  at  the  outset  this 
extraordinary  difference  between  the  relations  of 
landlord  and  tenant  in  Ireland  and  the  relations  of 
landlord  and  tenant  in  the  United  States.  Here 
a  lease  binds  alike  the  man  who  owns  and  the  man 
who  rents ;  in  Ireland  the  landlord  would  give  no 
lease.  Here  rent  cannot  be  increased  during  the 
period  covered  by  the  lease ;  there  the  rent  could 
b.e  increased  whenever  the  landlord  chose  to  increase 
it:  Here  the  tenant's  right  is  good  during  the  period 
covered  by  the  lease  if  he  complies  in  good  faith 
with  its  conditions ;  there  the  tenant  could  be  ejected 


IRELAND   PRIOR    TO    THE   LAND   WAR,        35 

at  the  caprice  of  the  landlord,  and  what  are  known  in 
Ireland  as  "  evictions  "  were  of  constant  occurrence, 
generally  under  heartrending  circumstances.  Here 
the  law  respects  and  protects  equally  the  rights  of 
the  landlord  and  the  rights  of  the  tenant ;  there  the 
law  respected  only  the  landlord :  the  tenant  had 
no  rights. 

It  is  obvious,  without  further  illustration,  that  the 
landlord-and-tenant  system  which  has  prevailed  in 
Ireland  would  not  be  tolerated  for  a  day  in  the 
United  States  or  in  any  other  free  country  on  the 
face  of  the  globe.  It  was  a  system  established  by 
military  force  and  maintained  by  laws  deliberately 
contrived,  and  the  army  and  the  navy  of  Great 
Britain  have  been  employed  to  compel  the  people 
to  submit  to  these  laws.  To  prevent  armed  insur- 
rection, which  has  been  threatened  from  time  to 
time,  the  British  government  has  kept  in  Ireland 
a  standing  army  varying  from  one  hundred  and  twenty 
thousand  men  a  hundred  years  ago  to  fifty  thousand 
at  the  present  time — thirty-five  thousand  regulars  and 
fifteen  thousand  military  constabulary ;  and,  in  addi- 
tion to  paying  exorbitant  rents  to  the  landlords,  the 
Irish  people  have  had  to  pay  taxes  to  support  this 
armed  occupancy.  Thus  has  it  come  to  pass  that 
the  Irish  people  are  poor,  that  they  have  been  with- 
out education,  that  they  have  no  manufactures  or 
commerce,  and  that  they  hate  the  British  govern- 
ment. 

The  English  invaded  Ireland  in  the  twelfth  cen- 


36         IRELAND  PRIOR    TO    THE  LAND  WAR. 

tury.  Prior  to  that  period  the  country  was  known 
throughout  the  civihzed  world  for  the  excellence 
and  number  of  its  institutions  of  learning,  to  which 
students  flocked  from  England  and  the  Continent, 
and  which  sent  all  over  Europe  men  eminent  alike 
for  virtue  and  for  scholarship.  There  was  a  native 
Parliament,  in  which  the  popular  voice  found  copious 
expression;  the  native  law,  known  as  the  Brehon 
Code,  was  fair  and  just,  and  contained  many  admi- 
rable provisions  for  the  protection  of  life,  the  security 
of  property  and  the  advancement  of  civilization. 

The  ravages  of  the  Danes  and  other  marauders 
and  the  quarrels  of  native  soldiers,  who  fought  with 
one  another  when  there  was  no  foreign  foe  at  hand, 
had  weakened  the  country,  and  the  English  invaders 
did  not  meet  with  successful  resistance.  But  they 
encountered  gigantic  difficulties  in  subjugating  the 
people,  who,  now  under  this  leader,  now  under  that, 
rose  with  such  strength  as  they  possessed  and  period- 
ically strove  to  expel  the  intruders. 

The  right  of  the  English  to  occupy  the  soil  of 
Ireland  was  never  acquiesced  in  by  the  people  of 
Ireland.  The  English  did  nothing  to  win  the  good- 
will of  the  people,  and  the  annals  of  century  after 
century  are  only  repetitions  of  the  same  tragic  story 
of  rebellion  and  massacre.  The  power  of  England 
constantly  waxed  and  the  strength  of  Ireland  con- 
stantly waned. 

The  ingenuity  of  the  statesmen  of  England  was 
called  into  requisition  to  complete  the  victories  of 


IRELAND  PRIOR    TO    THE  LAND  WAR.        3/ 

her  soldiers.  Laws  were  passed  during  each  suc- 
cessive reign  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  conquest 
so  severely  accomplished  by  arms.  These  laws  were 
directed  at 

The  land ; 

The  manufactures ; 

The  schools ; 

The  Parliament ; 

The  religion ; 

The  idea  of  nationality. 

All  these  laws  had  only  one  aim — the  reduction 
of  the  country  into  a  market  for  the  English  man- 
ufacturers. 

The  lands  were  confiscated  on  various  pretences, 
as  we  shall  hereafter  see ;  but  the  purpose  of  the 
confiscation  was  to  place  the  revenue  arising  from 
the  soil  in  the  hands  of  Englishmen,  who  would 
spend  it  in  England  and  not  turn  it  into  capital  for 
Irish  manufactures. 

Every  industry  which  appeared  in  the  country  was 
suppressed  by  the  English  Parliament  as  soon  as  its 
suppression  was  asked  by  English  manufacturers, 
who  would  not  tolerate  competition  in  Ireland. 

The  native  schools  were  suppressed  by  law  because 
they  made  the  people  too  intelligent  to  submit  to  the 
intolerable  burdens  of  foreign  hostile  legislation.  The 
native  tongue  was  by  law  prohibited.  The  native 
Parliament  was  abolished. 

As  religion,  sincerely  cherished,  is  dearer  to  the 
human  heart  than  all  other  possessions,  material  or 


38        IRELAND  PRIOR    TO    THE  LAND    WAR. 

ideal,  the  invading  power  assailed  the  faith  of  the 
Irish  people  with  a  barbarity  which  even  its  most 
stubborn  enemies  have  never  failed  to  denounce, 
and  which  will  for  ever  shock  the  sensibilities  of 
mankind. 

Unfortunately  for  the  victims,  the  vast  majority  of 
the  people  of  Ireland  were  Catholics  and  the  majority 
of  the  English  sovereigns  were  Protestants.  There 
is  nothing  in  the  personal  history  of  the  English 
Crown  to  justify  the  belief  that  had  all  the  monarchs 
been  of  one  faith,  and  that  the  faith  of  all  the  Irish  peo- 
ple, Ireland  would  have  fared  better  at  the  hands  of 
her  invaders.  The  makers  of  laws  against  religion 
were  hypocrites.  They  avowed  themselves  the  po- 
lice of  a  creed  claiming  to  be  superior  to  the  religion 
preferred  by  the  Irish  people ;  they  were,  in  truth,  only 
land-stealers.  The  penal  laws  concerning  religion  in 
Ireland  were  mere  land-grabbing  statutes.  The  Prot- 
estant English  Crown  said  to  the  land-owning  Irish 
Catholic,  "  You  are  worshipping%t  a  false  altar.  If 
you  do  not  come  to  mine,  I  will  punish  you  by  con- 
fiscating your  land."  It  was  not  to  save  his  soul  the 
Crown  was  anxious,  but  to  get  his  land ;  and,  to  get 
his  land,  the  Crown  overthrew  his  altar.  Nine  times 
in  ten  he  clung  to  the  altar  and  lost  his  land.  If  the 
Crown  had  been  of  another  creed  and  the  Irish  land- 
owner had  been  a  Protestant,  the  result  would  have 
been  the  same,  the  method  different.  The  possession 
of  the  land  was  the  ultimate  object,  and  it  was  seized 
on  every  excuse  and  on  none. 


IRELAND  PRIOR    TO    THE  LAND   WAR.         39 

The  extraordinary  fertility  of  the  soil  made  its 
ownership  of  supreme  importance  in  the  scheme  of 
conquest.  The  methods  by  which  it  was  gradually 
wrested  from  its  natural  owners,  the  laws  passed  for 
the  suppression  of  education,  of  religion,  of  manufac- 
tures, of  commerce,  of  the  Irish  Parliament,  and,  what 
was  transcendently  superior  to  all  these,  for  the  ex- 
tinction of  the  idea  of  Irish  nationality,  may  now  be 
considered  in  detail. 


CHAPTER    II. 
HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND. 

UNDER  various  pretences  the  English  invaders, 
while  affecting  to  govern  Ireland  for  Ire- 
land's good,  practically  confiscated  all  the  cultivable 
lands  of  the  country.  At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century  the  lands  under  cultivation  covered  an  area 
of  less  than  twelve  million  acres.  The  confiscations 
for  refusal  to  adopt  the  creed  of  the  State-Church, 
for  attempted  insurrection,  and  for  any  other  fault 
which  could  be  imputed  to  the  people,  were  as 
follows : 

Acres. 

During  the  reign  of  James  !....• 2,836,837 

At  the  Restoration 7,800,000 

During  1688 1,060,792 

Total 11,697,629 

In  a  word,  the  whole  island,  with  the  exception  of 
the  estates  of  a  few  English  families,  was  boldly  taken 
away  from  its  natural  and  rightful  owners,  and  not  a 
shilling  was  granted  them  in  payment  for  it. 

The  land  thus  confiscated  was  disposed  of  by  the 
English  Crown  by  three  methods :  It  was  given  in 
large  estates  to  favorites  of  the  reigning  monarch ;  it 

40 


HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND.         4I 

was  sold  to  English  or  Scotch  colonists  and  the  pro- 
ceeds went  into  the  royal  purse ;  and  it  was  offered 
gratuitously  to  other  colonists  from  foreign  countries 
upon  two  conditions — that  they  should  do  every- 
thing in  their  power  to  drive  out  the  native  Irish,  and 
that  they  should  not  suffer  any  of  the  natural  owners 
to  recover  any  portion  of  it  as  remuneration  for  ser- 
vice, in  return  for  labor  or  by  the  payment  of  money. 

In  the  confiscations  and  the  bestowal  of  the  lands 
afterward  according  to  royal  caprice  was  laid  the 
foundation  of  the  system  of  landlordism  which  exists 
to  this  day.  Many  of  the  persons  upon  whom  estates 
were  conferred  would  not  reside  in  Ireland,  and  were 
not  expected  to  do  so.  They  were  in  many  instances 
English  soldiers  whose  arms  were  needed  in  foreign 
wars ;  in  other  cases  they  were  convivial  companions 
of  the  monarch,  and  could  not  be  spared  from  his 
revels;  and  in  still  others  they  were  persons  yet 
lower  in  social  character.  These  newly-created 
landlords  appointed  agents  to  manage  their  estates 
for  them ;  then  was  laid  the  foundation  of  the  system 
of  absentee  landlords  and  ever-present  bailiffs.  The 
bailiff's  duty  was  to  get  the  highest  rent  he  could  for 
every  acre,  and  the  landlord's  privilege  was  to  spend 
the  income  thus  acquired.  Of  course  he  spent  none 
of  it  in  Ireland ;  even  the  bailiff's  wages  he  was  often 
required  to  extort  after  the  rent  had  been  collected. 

The  Scotch  and  English  colonists  were  called 
"  undertakers ;"  and  as  an  historical  curiosity,  as  well 
as  to  illustrate  perfectly  the  manner  in  which  the 


42       HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND, 

natural  owners  of  the  land  were  to  be  prevented 
from  recovering  it,  the  following  royal  order  is  re- 
produced : 

''Articles  concerning  the  English  and  Scotch  under- 
takers^ who  are  to  plant  their  portions  with  Eng- 
lish and  inland  Scottish  tenants. 

"  I.  His  Majesty  is  pleased  to  grant  estates  in  fee 
farm  to  them  and  their  heirs. 

"  2.  They  shall  yearly  yield  unto  His  Majesty,  for 
every  proportion  of  one  thousand  acres,  five  pounds 
six  shillings  and  eight  pence  English,  and  so  ratably 
for  the  greater  proportions ;  which  is  after  the  rate 
of  six  shillings  and  eight  pence  for  every  threescore 
English  acres.  But  none  of  the  said  undertakers 
shall  pay  any  rent  until  the  expiration  of  the  first  two 
years,  except  the  natives  of  Ireland,  who  are  not  sub- 
ject to  the  charge  of  transportation. 

"  3.  Every  undertaker  of  so  much  land  as  shall 
amount  to  the  greatest  proportion  of  two  thousand 
acres,  or  thereabouts,  shall  hold  the  same  by  knight 
service  in  capite ;  and  every  undertaker  of  so  much 
land  as  shall  amount  to  the  middle  proportion  of  fif- 
teen hundred  acres,  or  thereabouts,  shall  hold  the 
same  by  knight  service  as  of  the  castle  of  Dublin ; 
and  every  undertaker  of  so  much  land  as  shall  amount 
to  the  least  proportion  of  a  thousand  acres,  or  there- 
abouts, shall  hold  the  same  in  common  socage;  and 
there  shall  be  no  wardships  upon  the  two  first  de- 
scents of  that  land. 


HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND.         43 

"4.  Every  undertaker  of  the  greatest  proportion 
of  two  thousand  acres  shall  within  two  years  after 
the  date  of  his  letters  patent  build  thereupon  a  castle 
with  a  strong  court  or  bawn  about  it ;  and  every  un- 
dertaker of  the  second  or  middle  proportion  of  fifteen 
hundred  acres  shall  within  the  same  time  build  a 
stone  or  brick  house  thereupon  with  a  strong  court 
or  bawn  about  it ;  and  every  undertaker  of  the  least 
proportion  of  a  thousand  acres  shall  within  the  same 
time  make  thereupon  a  strong  court  or  bawn  at  least ; 
and  all  the  said  undertakers  shall  desire  their  tenants 
to  build  houses  for  themselves  and  their  families  near 
the  principal  castle,  house  or  bawn  for  their  mutual 
defence  or  strength.  .  .  . 

"  5.  The  said  undertakers,  their  heirs  and  assigns, 
shall  have  ready  in  their  houses  at  all  times  a  con- 
venient store  of  arms,  wherewith  they  may  furnish 
a  competent  number  of  able  men  for  their  defence, 
which  may  be  viewed  and  mustered  every  half-year, 
according  to  the  manner  of  England. 

"6.  Ever}'"  of  the  said  undertakers,  English  or 
Scotch,  before  the  ensealing  of  his  letters  patent, 
shall  take  the  oath  of  supremacy,  .  .  .  and  shall  also 
conform  themselves  in  religion  according  to  His  Maj- 
esty's laws. 

"  7.  The  said  undertakers,  their  heirs  and  assigns, 
shall  not  alien  or  demise  their  portions,  or  any  part 
thereof,  to  the  meer  Irish,  or  to  such  persons  as  will 
not  take  the  oath ;  and  to  that  end  a  proviso  shall  be 
inserted  in  their  letters  patent." 


44         ^OW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND. 

The  oath  was  that  of  acceptance  of  the  creed  of 
the  State-Church,  which  was  Protestant.  As  nine- 
tenths  of  the  Irish  people  were  CathoHcs,  they  could 
not  take  it ;  that  for  ever  excluded  them  from  recov- 
ering possession  of  their  land,  even  as  purchasers  or 
as  heirs. 

The  natural  owners  of  the  land  did  not  tamely 
submit  to  its  confiscation,  and  the  English  Crown 
was  compelled  to  employ  troops  to  drive  them  off. 
The  manner  in  which  the  troops  complied  with  the 
orders  of  the  Crown  can  be  most  appropriately  de- 
scribed in  the  reports  of  commanding  officers  and  in 
the  words  of  English  historians. 

Malby,  an  officer  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  wrote  to 
her:  "At  Christmas,  I  marched  into  their  territory 
[Shan  Burke's],  and,  finding  courteous  dealing  with 
them  had  like  to  have  cut  my  throat,  I  thought  good 
to  take  another  course ;  and  so,  with  determination 
to  consume  them  with  fire  and  sword,  sparing  neither 
old  nor  youngs  I  entered  their  mountains.  I  burnt 
all  their  corn  and  houses  and  committed  to  the 
sword  all  that  could  be  found,  where  were  slain  at 
that  time  above  sixty  of  their  best  men,  and  among 
them  the  best  leaders  they  had.  This  was  Shan 
Burke's  country.  Then  I  burnt  Ulick  Burke's  coun- 
ty. In  like  manner  I  assaulted  a  castle  where  the 
garrison  surrendered.  I  put  them  to  the  miser- 
icordia  of  my  soldiers  :  they  were  all  slain.  Thence 
I  went  on,  sparing  none  which  came  in  my  way; 
which  cruelty  did  so  amaze  their  followers  that  they 


HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND,         45 

could  not  tell  where  to  bestow  themselves.  Shan 
Burke  made  means  to  me  to  pardon  him  and  forbear 
killing  of  his  people.  I  would  not  hearken,  but  went 
on  my  way.  The  gentlemen  of  Clanrickard  came  to 
me.  I  found  it  was  but  dallying  to  win  time ;  so  I 
left  Ulick  as  little  corn  and  as  few  houses  standing 
as  I  left  his  brother,  and  what  people  was  found  had 
as  little  favor  as  the  other  had.  It  was  all  done  in 
rain  and  frost  and  stonUy  journeys  in  such  weather 
bringing  them  the  sooner  to  submission.  They  are 
humble  enough  now,  and  will  yield  to  any  terms  we 
like  to  offer  them." 

Similar  reports  were  made  by  others. 

Hollinshed  describes  the  progress  of  the  army: 
"  As  they  went  they  drove  the  whole  country  before 
them  into  the  Ventrie,  and  by  that  means  they  prey- 
ed and  took  all  the  cattle  in  the  country,  to  the  num- 
ber of  eight  thousand  kine,  besides  horses,  garrons, 
sheep  and  goats,  and  all  such  people  as  they  met 
they  did  without  mercy  put  to  the  sword.  By  these 
means  the  whole  country  having  no  cattle  nor  kine 
left,  they  were  driven  to  such  extremities  that  for 
want  of  victuals  they  were  either  to  die  and  perish 
for  famine  or  to  die  under  the  sword." 

It  was  lawful  to  kill  "the  meer  Irish,"  provided 
the  persons  slain  had  not  become  loyal  to  the  Eng- 
lish Crown.  Sir  John  Davies,  one  of  the  officers  of 
James  I.  in  Ireland,  thus  reports:  "The  real  Irish 
were  not  only  accounted  aliens,  but  enemies,  and  al- 
together out  of  the  protection  of  the  law,  so  as  it 
8 


46        HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND, 

was  no  capital  offence  to  kill  them ;  and  this  is  man- 
ifest by  many  records." 

An  Englishman  committed  the  blunder  of  killing 
an  Irishman  who  had  become  "  loyal."  He  pleaded 
in  defence,  when  on  trial,  the  law  that  his  victim  was 
a  "  meer  Irishman,"  and  therefore  that  it  was  not  a 
crime  to  kill  him.  But  it  was  proved  that  the  Irish- 
man was  "loyal,"  and  the  slayer  "was  recommitted 
to  jail  until  he  shall  find  pledges  to  pay  five  marks 
to  our  lord  the  king  for  the  value  of  said  Irishman." 

If  the  Irish  did  not  become  loyal  after  being  driven 
off  their  lands,  they  could  be  lawfully  killed ;  if  they 
became  loyal,  they  became  in  effect  slaves  to  the 
Crown,  and  whoso  killed  them  then  had  to  pay  the 
king  for  the  destruction  of  his  property. 

Thousands,  after  being  driven  off  their  own  lands, 
were  forced  on  shipboard,  carried  to  Virginia  and 
the  West  Indies  and  sold  as  slaves.  Six  thousand 
were  compelled  to  go  to  Sweden  and  fight  for  Gus- 
tavus  Adolphus. 

The  lord  deputy,  who  was  directing  the  expulsion 
of  the  people  from  their  lands  in  Ulster  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  seventeenth  century,  thus  reported : 
*'  I  have  often  said  and  written  it  is  famine  that  must 
consume  the  Irish,  as  our  swords  and  other  endeavors 
worked  not  that  speedy  effect  which  is  expected ; 
hunger  would  be  a  better,  because  a  speedier,  weapon 
to  employ  against  them  than  the  sword.  ...  I 
burned  all  along  the  lough  (Neagh)  within  four 
miles  of  Dungannon,  and  killed  one  hundred  people, 


HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND,        4/ 

sparing  none,  of  what  quality,  age  or  sex  soever, 
besides  many  burned  to  death.  We  killed  man, 
woman  and  child^  horse,  beast  and  whatsoever  we 
could  find." 

Sir  George  Carew  reports  that  "harassing  the 
country  "  the  English  "  killed  all  mankind  that  were 
found  therein.  .  .  .  Wee  came  into  Arleaghe  woods, 
where  wee  did  the  like,  not  leaving  behind  us  man 
or  beast,  corn  or  cattle,  except  such  as  had  been 
conveyed  into  the  castles." 

The  English  historian  Moryson  writes :  "  No 
spectacle  was  more  frequent  in  the  ditches  of  the 
towns,  and  especially  in  wasted  countries,  than  to 
see  multitudes  of  these  poor  people,  the  Irish,  dead, 
with  their  mouths  all  colored  green  by  eating  net- 
tles, docks,  and  all  things  they  could  reach  above 
ground." 

Cromwell's  savage  way  of  driving  the  people  off 
their  lands  was  not  surpassed  by  the  methods  of 
any  of  his  predecessors.  When  the  garrison  at 
Drogheda  surrendered  he  explicitly  promised  them 
that  their  lives  would  be  spared.  After  the  surren- 
der not  only  were  the  soldiers  butchered  in  cold 
blood,  but  Cromwell  put  to  the  sword  "  every  man 
that  related  to  the  garrison  and  all  the  citizens  who 
were  Irish,  man,  woman  and  child,"  says  the  English 
historian  Clarendon.  Cromwell  himself  wrote  to  the 
English  Parliament :  "  I  wish  that  all  honest  hearts 
may  give  the  glory  of  this  to  God  alone,  to  whom, 
indeed,  the  praise  of  this  mercy  belongs." 


48        HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND. 

Lingard,  the  English  historian,  says  :  "  No  distinc- 
tion was  made  between  the  defenceless  inhabitant 
and  the  armed  soldier;  nor  could  the  shrieks  and 
prayers  of  three  hundred  females  who  had  gathered 
round  the  great  cross  preserve  them  from  the 
swords  of  these  ruthless  barbarians." 

Cromwell  had  gone  to  Ireland  the  avowed  expo- 
nent of  liberty  of  conscience.  "  I  believe  in  freedom 
of  conscience,"  he  cried;  "but  if  by  that  you  under- 
stand leave  to  go  to  mass,  by  the  horns  of  Beeleze- 
bub,  you  shall  repent  your  error !" 

Cromwell  had  at  least  the  virtue  of  killing  his 
victims  promptly.  He  may  have  been  scandalized 
by  reading  how  an  English  officer,  annoyed  by  the 
presumption  of  an  Irishman  who  clung  to  his  land 
and  his  life,  tied  the  man  to  a  Maypole  and  put  out 
his  eyes  with  his  thumbs,  and  he  was  probably  aware 
that  children  had  been  kept  alive  longer  than  Eng- 
lish interests  demanded  when  the  English  soldiers 
threw  the  infants  of  Irish  land-owners  up  in  the  air 
and  caught  them  on  the  points  of  their  bayonets. 
Francis  Crosby,  an  English  officer,  used  to  hang 
men,  women  and  children  on  a  tree  before  his  door 
and  watch  with  amusement  the  infants  clinging  to 
the  long  hair  of  their  mothers. 

Cromwell  understood  the  value  of  famine  as  one 
of  the  resources  of  war.  He  took  with  him  into 
Ireland  scythes  and  sickles  to  cut  down  the  harvests 
and  starve  those  who  escaped  his  sword.  He  also 
understood  the  use  of  fire  on  occasion.     Some  of  the 


ffOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND.        51 

women  in  Drogheda  took  refuge  in  a  church-steeple ; 
he  put  the  torch  to  it.  For  those  who  escaped 
sword,  famine  and  fire  he  had  still  another  resource : 
it  was  slavery  in  a  distant  clime.  "  I  do  not  think 
thirty  escaped  with  their  lives,"  he  wrote  from  Dro- 
gheda ;  "  those  that  did  are  in  safe  custody  for  the 
Barbadoes." 

When  Cromwell  had  done  his  worst,  with  all  his  re- 
sources, some  of  the  natural  owners  of  the  Irish  land 
still  occupied  it.  Then  the  English  Parliament  selected 
one  province  in  the  country — the  one  most  barren  and 
desolate,  Connaught — and  to  it  consigned,  on  penalty 
of  death  if  they  left  it,  all  the  people  who  had  sur- 
vived the  war  of  extermination.  Some  of  those  who 
were  compelled  to  submit  to  this-  order  had  them- 
selves been  engaged  in  driving  off  the  land  its  right- 
ful owners  ;  they  were  descendants  of  the  English  to 
whom  the  lands  had  been  given  previously  by  the 
English  Crown,  and  they  were  now  compelled  to 
submit  to  the  miseries  they  had  helped  to  inflict  on 
the  people  to  whom  the  land  belonged.  They  peti- 
tioned the  Parliament  in  vain.  Among  them  was  a 
grandson  of  the  poet  Spenser ;  he  pleaded  the  great 
name  he  bore,  but  his  entreaties  were  derided.  Some 
of  the  people  who  refused  to  leave  their  land  were 
promptly  hanged ;  hundreds  were  shipped  to  the 
West  Indies  as  slaves;  some  went  mad;  some  com- 
mitted suicide. 

At  that  time  was  established,  and  in  this  "  legal " 
manner,  the  title  by  which  many  of  the  present  race 


52         JIOIV  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND, 

of  Irish  landlords  obtained  their  claims  to  the  estates 
they  now  hold.  An  eminent  Protestant  lawyer  of  Ire- 
land has  said  that  he  supposed  no  man  at  the  bar  of  that 
country  ever  traced  an  Irish  title  back  to  its  origin 
without  discovering  that  it  was  born  in  confiscation. 

The  ferocity  of  the  English  troops  in  Ireland  did 
not  abate  with  time,  nor  did  the  English  soldier  of  a 
hundred  years  later  think  any  less  lightly  of  "  killing 
a  meer  Irishman."  In  the  Cornwallis  correspondence 
will  be  found  an  episode  as  frightful  as  any  that  oc- 
curred during  the  confiscations  of  the  lands.  A 
squad  of  English  soldiers  forced  their  way  into  a 
humble  cottage,  where  they  found  a  young  Irishman 
with  his  aged  mother.  While  her  arms  encircled  the 
boy  and  her  piteous  cries  resounded  in  their  ears, 
they  shot  him  dead.  The  officer  in  command  of  the 
squad  was  tried  by  court-martial  and  acquitted,  the 
defence  being  that  he  suspected  the  young  man  of 
being  a  rebel ! 

English  legislation,  as  well  as  troops,  was  employ- 
ed to  prevent  the  rightful  owners  of  the  land  in  Ire- 
land from  recovering  any  part  of  it.  This  legislation 
is  comprised  in  what  are  commonly  called  the  "  penal 
laws."  They  were  ostensibly  enacted  in  behalf  of 
the  Protestant  religion  and  for  the  purpose  of  sup- 
pressing the  Catholic  faith  in  Ireland.  Their  real 
purpose  was  to  prevent  the  natural  owners  of  the 
lands  from  recovering  them  and  from  engaging  in 
any  pursuit  of  profit  or  of  honor.  The  vast  majority 
of  the  people  were  Catholics :  every  penalty  that  in- 


HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND.         53 

genuity  could  devise  was  laid  on  that  faith.  An  ex- 
amination of  the  statutes  reveals  only  one  always- 
present  object — to  prevent  the  people  from  recover- 
ing or  acquiring  land  or  other  property.  They  were 
to  be  reduced  to  a  condition  of  unlettered  serfage. 

The  penal  laws  are  thus  described  by  the  Prot- 
estant historian  Lecky.  In  reading  his  summary  of 
them  truth  requires  that  "  Englishman "  should  be 
substituted  for  "  Protestant,"  and  "  Irishman "  for 
"  Cathohc :" 

"  It  required,  indeed,  four  or  five  reigns  to  elab- 
orate a  system  so  ingeniously  contrived  to  demoral- 
ize, to  degrade  and  impoverish  the  people  of  Ireland. 
By  this  code  the  Roman  Catholics  were  absolutely 
excluded  from  the  Parliament,  from  the  magistracy, 
from  the  corporations,  from  the  bench  and  from  the 
bar.  They  could  not  vote  at  parliamentary  elections 
or  at  vestries.  They  could  not  act  as  constables  or 
sheriffs  or  jurymen,  or  serve  in  the  army  or  navy, 
or  become  solicitors,  or  even  hold  the  position  of 
gamekeeper  or  watchman.  Schools  were  established 
to  bring  up  their  children  as  Protestants ;  and  if  they 
refused  to  avail  themselves  of  these,  they  were  delib- 
erately consigned  to  hopeless  ignorance,  being  ex- 
cluded from  the  university  and  debarred,  under 
crushing  penalties,  from  acting  as  schoolmasters,  as 
ushers  or  as  private  tutors,  or  from  sending  their 
children  abroad  to  obtain  the  instruction  they  were 
refused  at  home.  They  could  not  marry  Protestants ; 
and  If  such  a  marriage  were  celebrated;  the  priest 


54        ffOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND. 

who  officiated  might  be  hung.  They  could  not  buy- 
land,  nor  inherit  it,  nor  receive  it  as  a  gift,  from  Prot- 
estants, nor  hold  life-annuities,  or  leases  for  more 
than  thirty-one  years,  or  any  lease  on  such  terms 
that  the  profits  of  the  land  exceeded  one-third  of 
the  rent.  If  any  Catholic  householder,  by  his  indus- 
try so  increased  his  profits  that  they  exceeded  this 
proportion,  and  did  not  immediately  make  a  corre- 
sponding increase  in  his  payments,  any  Protestant 
who  gave  the  information  could  enter  into  possession 
of  his  farm.  If  any  Catholic  had  secretly  purchased 
either  his  old  forfeited  estate  or  any  other  land,  any 
Protestant  who  informed  against  him  might  become 
the  proprietor.  The  few  Catholic  land-holders  who 
remained  were  deprived  of  the  right  which  all  other 
classes  possessed — of  bequeathing  their  land  as 
they  pleased.  If  their  sons  continued  Catholics,  it 
was  divided  equally  among  them.  If,  however,  the 
eldest  son  consented  to  apostatize,  the  estate  was 
settled  upon  him ;  the  father  from  that  hour  became 
only  a  life-tenant,  and  lost  all  power  of  selling, 
mortgaging  or  otherwise  disposing  of  it.  If  the 
wife  of  a  Catholic  abandoned  the  religion  of  her 
husband,  she  was  immediately  free  from  his  control, 
and  the  chancellor  was  empowered  to  assign  to  her 
a  certain  portion  of  her  husband's  property.  If  any 
child,  however  young,  professed  itself  a  Protestant, 
it  was  at  once  taken  from  its  father's  care,  and  the 
chancellor  could  oblige  the  father  to  declare  upon 
oath  the  value  of  his  property,  both  real  and  personal, 


HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND.  55 

and  could  assign  for  the  present  maintenance  and 
future  portion  of  the  converted  child  such  propor- 
tion of  that  property  as  the  court  might  decree.  No 
Catholic  could  be  guardian  either  to  his  own  chil- 
dren or  to  those  of  another  person,  and  therefore  a 
Catholic  who  died  while  his  children  were  minors 
had  the  bitterness  of  reflecting  upon  his  deathbed 
that  they  must  pass  into  the  care  of  Protestants. 
An  annuity  of  from  twenty  to  forty  pounds  was 
provided  as  a  bribe  for  every  priest  who  would 
become  a  Protestant.  To  convert  a  Protestant  to 
Catholicism  was  a  capital  offence.  In  every  walk  of 
life  the  Catholic  was  pursued  by  persecution  or 
restriction.  Except  in  the  linen  trade,  he  could  not 
have  more  than  two  apprentices.  He  could  not  pos- 
sess a  horse  of  the  value  of  more  than  five  pounds, 
and  any  Protestant,  on  giving  him  five  pounds,  could 
take  his  horse.  He  was  compelled  to  pay  double 
to  the  militia.  He  was  forbidden,  except  under  par- 
ticular conditions,  to  live  in  Galway  or  Limerick. 
In  case  of  war  with  a  Catholic  prince,  the  Catholics 
were  obliged  to  reimburse  the  damage  done  by  the 
enemy's  privateers.  ...  To  facilitate  the  discovery 
of  offences  against  the  code,  two  justices  of  the 
peace  might  at  any  time  compel  any  Catholic  of 
eighteen  years  of  age  to  declare  when  and  where  he 
last  heard  mass,  what  persons  were  present  and  who 
officiated ;  and  if  he  refused  to  give  evidence,  they 
might  imprison  him  for  twelve  months  or  until  he 
had  paid  a  fine  of  twenty  pounds.  ...  A  graduated 


$6  HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND. 

scale  of  rewards  was  offered  for  the  discovery  of 
Catholic  bishops,  priests  and  schoolmasters,  and 
a  resolution  of  the  [Irish]  House  of  Commons  pro- 
nounced *  the  prosecuting  and  informing  against 
papists '  *  an  honorable  service  to  the  government' 
.  .  .  Such  were  the  principal  articles  of  this  famous 
code.  .  .  .  It  was  framed  by  a  small  minority  of  the 
nation  for  the  oppression  of  the  majority  who  re- 
mained faithful  to  the  religion  of  their  fathers.  .  .  . 
It  was  framed  and  enforced,  although  by  the  treaty 
of  Limerick  the  Catholics  had  been  guaranteed  such 
privileges  in  the  exercise  of  their  religion  as  they 
enjoyed  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II. ;  although  the 
sovereign  at  the  same  time  promised,  as  soon  as  his 
affairs  would  permit,  to  summon  a  Parliament  in  this 
kingdom  and  endeavor  to  procure  the  said  Roman 
Catholics  such  further  security  in  that  particular  as 
may  preserve  them  from  any  disturbance  on  account 
of  their  religion ;  although  not  a  single  act  of  trea- 
son was  proved  against  them;  and  although  they 
remained  passive  spectators  to  two  rebellions  which 
menaced  the  very  existence  of  the  Protestant  dynasty 
in  England." 

The  first  of  these  laws  was  passed  in  1 69 1.  The 
volunteers  of  '82  abolished  some  of  them  ;  they  were 
not  finally  repealed  until  the  country  was  about  to 
rise  in  insurrection,  in   1829. 

The  confiscations  deprived  the  people  of  Ireland 
of  all  the  land. 

The  penal   laws  deprived  them  of  the  right  of 


HOW  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THE  LAND.  $7 

recovering,  even  by  peaceful  means,  what  had  been 
taken  from  them  by  force. 

The  penal  laws  also  deprived  them  of  personal 
property. 

The  penal  laws  deprived  them  of  education. 

Such  were  the  advantages  the  Irish  people  obtained 
from  the  English  invaders  for  six  hundred  years  after 
the  invasion. 


CHAPTER    III. 

THE  REASON  IRELAND  HAS  NO  MANUFAC- 
TURES. 

IT  is  frequently  remarked  by  observing  Americans 
that  we  get  no  skilled  labor  from  Ireland.  An 
examination  of  the  industrial  statistics  of  that  coun- 
try exposes  a  remarkable  fact — that  it  is  a  country 
without  manufactures.  The  fact  is  remarkable  be- 
cause Nature  is  not  responsible  for  it;  and  the  uni- 
versal development  of  the  vast  system  of  modern 
exchanges  makes  it  more  conspicuous.  Economists 
have  stated  again  and  again  that  in  Ireland  there  is 
enough  water-power  to  run  the  machinery  of  the 
world.  That  she  has  no  extensive  coal-beds  does 
not  account  for  the  absence  of  factories,  because 
coals  can  be  delivered  in  Dublin  cheaper  than  in 
Manchester  or  London ;  and  France,  with  her  im- 
mense diversity  of  manufactures,  has  to  import  coal. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  soil  of  Ireland  is  capable 
of  producing  at  a  minimum  of  outlay  raw  material 
which  could  profitably  be  manufactured  for  the  home 
and  foreign  markets ;  and,  instead  of  devoting  her 
energy  in  this  direction,  we  find  that  her  one  article 
of  trade,  in  which  she  is  relatively  insignificant — the 

68 


IRELAND  HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES.  59 

linen — is  produced  largely  from  imported  flax,  her 
own  soil  not  being  adapted  to  the  cultivation  of  the 
best  flaxseed.  Excepting  a  few  linen-factories,  with 
a  small  number  of  minor  productions  scarcely  worthy 
classification,  she  is  a  country  without  manufactures. 
She  has  nothing  to  sell  except  the  food  produced 
by  her  land ;  she  has  to  send  abroad,  chiefly  to  Eng- 
land, for  everything  she  buys.  A  country  thus  sit- 
uated cannot  be  a  prosperous  country.  A  country 
thus  situated  cannot  furnish  skilled  labor  to  the  new 
and  active  world  in  which  so  many  of  her  sons  have 
sought  homes. 

A  country  in  which  there  is  but  one  means  of 
living,  and  that  one  means  dependent  on  inexorable 
physical  laws,  must  have  periods  of  suffering.  The 
more  diversified  the  forms  of  remunerative  activity 
in  which  a  people  are  engaged,  the  more  protection 
have  they  against  financial  panics  ;  the  more  constant 
their  prosperity,  the  more  enterprising  their  capital. 
A  country  with  only  one  activity,  and  that  farming, 
must  be  a  poor  country,  doomed  to  periodical  mis- 
ery and  to  constant  poverty.  .  If  the  almost  total 
lack  of  manufactures  in  Ireland  be  her  own  fault, 
she  is  not  entitled  to  the  sympathy  of  mankind.  If, 
on  the  contrary,  her  want  of  manufactures  is  a  want 
created  and  maintained  by  foreign  legislation  en- 
forced in  her  territory,  the  economist  will  discover 
in  her  anomalous  condition  an  extraordinary  phe- 
nomenon, and  the  lover  of  justice,  honesty  and  fair 
play  in  commerce  a  striking  example  of  the  help- 


6o  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

lessness  to  which  a  more  powerful  country  may  re- 
duce the  victim  of  prohibitory  laws. 

Ireland  was  not  always  without  manufactures.  In 
the  United  States,  in  Canada,  in  Australia,  where  the 
Irish  people  are  free  to  choose  the  forms  of  industry 
which  they  will  follow,  we  find  them  in  all  the  in- 
dustries. As  a  rule,  they  are  not  capitalists,  for  ob- 
vious reasons;  for  the  same 'reasons  they  are  not 
skilled  in  any  of  the  mechanical  trades  when  they 
immigrate ;  but  the  young  Irish  enter  into  all  the 
trades,  become  skilled  in  them,  and,  as  soon  as  they 
are  able,  follow  the  example  of  all  other  national- 
ities :  they  become  manufacturers  as  soon  as  they 
get  money  enough.  The  charge  of  idleness  made 
against  them  in  Ireland  has  been  emphatically  de- 
nied by  John  Bright,  who  has  borne  willing  testi- 
mony to  their  zeal  and  energy  in  England  and  in 
the  countries  of  the  Western  continent.  He  says, 
**  They  are  the  hardest-working  people  in  the  world." 
They  lack,  manifestly,  neither  the  natural  aptitude 
nor  the  desire  to  engage  in  mechanical  and  other 
manufacturing  occupations. 

It  must,  therefore,  be  opportunity  they  lack  in 
Ireland.  It  will  be  seen  that  they  have  been  de- 
prived of  opportunity  by  laws  enacted  with  the 
greatest  deliberation  by  the  government  which  still 
claims  the  right  to  rule  them ;  and  it  is  reasonable 
to  declare  that  the  interests  of  the  English  man- 
ufacturers require  that  Ireland  shall  continue  to  be 
a  country  without  manufactures.     The  legislation  of 


JTAS  NO  MANUFACTURES.  6l 

England  for  Ireland  has  uniformly  been  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  English  manufacturers.  It  is  perfectly- 
natural  that  it  should  be. 

If  the  United  States  Congress  should  attempt  to 
make  a  discriminating  tariff  for  the  purpose  of  giv- 
ing one  group  of  States  commercial  advantages  over 
another  group,  the  integrity  of  the  National  Union 
would  reasonably  be  considered  in  danger.  If,  to 
foster  the  development  of  a  certain  industry  in  Ohio, 
prohibitory  duties  were  laid  on  the  exportation  of 
all  articles  of  that  nature  from  Pennsylvania  and 
New  York,  it  is  extremely  probable  that  the  doc- 
trine of  secession  would  take  on  an  almost  be- 
nign aspect  in  New  York  and  Pennsylvania.  The 
fact  is  unquestioned  and  unquestionable  that  the 
British  government  destroyed  and  effectually  pro- 
hibited manufactures  in  Ireland — an  integral  part 
of  the  British  empire — for  the  benefit  of  the  English 
manufacturers ;  yet  there  are  careful  and  reflecting 
Americans  who  wonder  why  Ireland  has  no  man- 
ufactures, and  why  the  Irish  people  talk  about  their 
right  to  a  legislature  of  their  own  to  enact  laws  for 
the  regulation  of  their  domestic  affairs ! 

Let  us  examine  the  record. 

The  exchanges  which  Ireland  had  with  other 
countries  before  the  suppression  of  her  trade  were 
the  exportation  of  cattle,  living  and  cured ;  the  ex- 
portation of  hides;  the  exportation  of  wool,  raw 
and  manufactured ;  the  exportation  of  glass,  tallow, 
and  many  other  articles  of  less  value  in  the  aggre- 


62  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

gate.  The  countries  to  which  these  exports  were 
carried  in  Irish  ships  were  England,  the  American 
colonies  and  the  countries  of  the  East  between  which 
and  the  West  of  Europe  commerce  had  sprung  up. 
The  cattle  trade  gave  Ireland  a  large  revenue ;  the 
woollen  industry  became  a  source  of  increasing 
wealth  with  the  gradual  enlargement  of  the  foreign 
markets,  especially  the  convenient  market  of  the 
rapidly-growing  American  colonies.  Had  this  trade 
not  been  meddled  with,  it  would  have  enriched  Ire- 
land with  capital  to  invest  in  the  many  new  articles 
of  commerce  which  the  growth  of  the  arts,  the  de- 
mands of  extending  civilization  and  the  application 
of  the  physical  sciences  to  industry  were,  and  are, 
still  creating  or  multiplying.  But  English  law  was 
invoked  by  the  English  manufacturers  to  suppress 
Irish  trade  for  their  benefit ;  and,  following  that  sup- 
pression, capital,  having  nothing  to  do  in  Ireland, 
went  out  of  the  country  and  did  not  return.  With- 
out capital,  production  is  impossible ;  without  pro- 
duction, there  can  be  no  skilled  labor.  Without  the 
exchanges  which  capital  and  skilled  labor  jointly 
produce,  a  country  is  necessarily  poor. 

The  principle  which  was  always  present  in  Eng- 
lish economical  legislation  for  Ireland  was  that  Ire- 
land should  be  the  private  and  exclusive  market  of 
the  English  manufacturer.  Nothing  should  be  pro- 
duced in  Ireland  which  could  be  sent  from  England 
into  Ireland ;  nothing  should  be  sent  from  Ireland 
into  England  which  could  be  produced  in  England ; 


HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES.  63 

Ireland  should  not  be  suffered  to  sell  anything  in 
any  foreign  market  which  the  English  could  sell 
there;  Ireland  should  not  buy  from  any  one  but 
England.  These  resolves  reduced  the  economical 
relations  of  Ireland  with  mankind  to  a  very  simple 
basis.  They  were  faithfully  carried  out  by  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament.  The  exportation  of  cattle  was  for- 
bidden. Next  the  exportation  of  cured  meats  was 
forbidden.  Gradually  all  exports  were  forbidden  ex- 
cept what  the  English  manufacturers  wanted :  they 
were  quite  willing  that  the  linen  trade  should  be  en- 
couraged in  Ireland,  because  it  was  inconvenient  for 
them  and  too  expensive,  as  the  flaxseed  would  have 
to  be  imported.  And  when  the  American  war  broke 
out  the  trade  of  Ireland  was  utterly  annihilated ;  she 
was  not  permitted  to  send  anything  to  the  colonies, 
and  she  could  receive  nothing  from  them  except 
what  was  passed  through  English  ports,  although 
the  ships  from  the  colonies  to  England  had  to  sail 
by  her  own  doors.  How  vast  the  commerce  of  Ire- 
land, unchecked,  might  have  become  may  be  imag- 
ined when  we  recall  that  of  her  thirty-two  coun- 
ties nineteen  are  maritime  and  the  rest  are  washed 
by  copious  rivers  that  empty  into  the  sea. 

The  money  that  had  formerly  been  carried  back 
from  foreign  ports  by  Irish  ships  ceased  to  come; 
and  Swift  says  that  the  currency  of  Ireland,  before 
the  suppression  of  her  trade,  included  the  coins 
of  every  sovereign  in  Europe.  The  shrinkage  in 
the  circulation  soon  affected  the  home  market:  as 


64  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

the  people  were  not  permitted  to  sell,  they  had  little 
to  buy  with  ;  and  it  was  not  long  after  the  closing  of 
the  foreign  markets  to  Ireland  by  her  foreign  govern- 
ment that  her  home  market  became  stagnant.  This 
is  the  picture  a  capable  writer  of  that  period  (Hely 
Hutchinson,  a  Protestant,  and  provost  of  Trinity  Col- 
lege) gave  of  the  condition  of  Ireland  just  a  hundred 
years  ago :  ''  The  present  state  of  Ireland  teems  with 
every  circumstance  of  national  poverty.  Whatever 
the  land  produces  is  greatly  reduced  in  value ;  wool 
is  fallen  one-half  in  its  usual  price,  wheat  one-third, 
black  cattle  of  all  kinds  in  the  same  proportion,  and 
hides  in  a  much  greater ;  buyers  are  not  had  without 
difficulty  at  those  low  rates,  and  from  the  principal 
fairs  men  commonly  return  with  the  commodities 
they  brought  there ;  rents  are  everywhere  reduced, 
and  in  many  places  it  is  impossible  to  collect  them ; 
the  farmers  are  all  distressed,  and  many  of  them 
have  failed;  when  leases  expire  tenants  are  not  easily 
found ;  the  landlord  is  often  obliged  to  take  his  lands 
into  his  own  hands  for  want  of  bidders  at  reasonable 
rents,  and  finds  his  estate  fallen  one-fourth  of  its 
value.  The  merchant  justly  complains  that  all  bus- 
iness is  at  a  stand,  that  he  cannot  discount  his  bills, 
and  that  neither  money  nor  paper  circulates.  In 
this  and  the  last  year  above  twenty  thousand  man- 
ufacturers in  this  metropolis  were  reduced  to  beg- 
gary for  want  of  employment.  They  were  for  a 
considerable  length  of  time  supported  by  alms;  a 
part  of  the  contribution  came  from  England,  and 


HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES,  6$ 

this  assistance  was  much  wanting,  from  the  general 
distress  of  all  ranks  of  the  people  in  this  country. 
Public  and  private  credit  is  annihilated.  .  .  .  This 
kingdom  has  long  been  declining.  The  annual  de- 
ficiency of  its  revenues  for  the  payment  of  the  pub- 
lic expenses  has  been  for  many  years  supplied  by 
borrowing ;  the  American  rebellion,  which  consider- 
ably diminished  the  demand  for  our  linen,  an  em- 
bargo on  provisions  for  three  years  and  highly  in- 
jurious to  our  victualling  trade,  the  increasing  drain 
of  remittances  to  England  for  rents,  salaries,  profits 
of  offices  and  the  payment  of  forces  abroad,  have 
made  the  decline  more  rapid." 

It  will  not  escape  the  observation  of  Americans 
that,  while  England  continued  to  destroy  the  trade 
and  commerce  of  Ireland — as  if  she  were  an  enemy 
at  war,  while,  in  fact,  she  was  profoundly  at  peace — 
England  continued  to  tax  Ireland  like  the  most  loyal 
and  most  abject  of  subjects,  and  even  required  her  to 
pay  part  of  the  expense  of  the  American  Revolution, 
with  whose  avowed  objects  the  four-fifths  of  the  Irish 
people  openly  sympathized,  their  sympathy  being  ex- 
pressed in  public  meetings  and  in  messages  trans- 
mitted to  this  country,  in  which  Irish  valor  was  so 
enthusiastically  enlisted  in  the  patriot  cause.  So 
deeply  was  Irish  sympathy  valued,  and  so  anxious 
were  the  Americans  to  retain  the  good-will  of  the 
Irish  people,  that  the  Continental  Congress  sent  to 
the  Irish  people  an  address,  in  which  it  declared: 
"  You  have  been  friendly  to  the  rights  of  mankind ; 


66  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

and  we  acknowledge  with  pleasure  and  gratitude  that 
the  Irish  nation  has  produced  patriots  who  have 
highly  distinguished  themselves  in  the  cause  of  hu- 
manity and  America.  On  the  other  hand,  we  are 
not  ignorant  that  the  labors  and  manufacture  of  Ire- 
land, like  those  of  the  silkworm,  were  of  little  mo- 
ment to  herself,  but  served  only  to  give  luxury  to 
those  who  neither  toil  nor  spin,"  alluding  to  the  con- 
stant over-taxation  of  the  country  for  the  support  of 
a  foreign  government  on  its  own  soil,  and  for  pen- 
sions for  favorites  of  the  Crown,  some  of  whom  were 
infamous  persons  of  both  sexes  and  most  of  whom 
had  never  even  set  foot  on  Irish  soil  to  bless  or  curse 
it.  "  We  know  that  you  are  not  without  your  griev- 
ances," the  address  continues.  "  We  sympathize  with 
you  in  your  distress,  and  are  pleased  to  find  that  the 
design  of  subjugating  us  persuaded  the  administra- 
tion to  dispense  to  Ireland  some  vagrant  rays  of  min- 
isterial sunshine.  The  tender  mercies  of  the  govern- 
ment have  long  been  cruel  toward  you.  We  hope 
the  patient  abiding  of  the  meek  may  not  always  be 
forgotten,  and  God  grant  that  the  iniquitous  system 
of  extirpating  liberty  may  soon  be  defeated !" 

"  Vagrant  rays  of  ministerial  sunshine  "  was  a  very 
apt  description  of  the  few  concessions  which  the 
English  government  reluctantly  granted  to  Ireland 
while  under  the  pressure  of  war  with  the  colonies 
and  threatened  invasion  by  France.  A  few  of  the 
heavy  duties  on  some  minor  articles  for  which  the 
war  created  a  higher  demand  in  England  were  mod- 


HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES.  69 

ified  or  removed,  but  a  still  larger  boon  was  yet  to 
be  conceded. 

The  Irish  Parliament  sat  in  College  Green,  in  the 
building  which  is  now  the  Bank  of  Ireland,  before 
which,  as  he  was  driven  past  it  last  summer,  Charles 
Stewart  Parnell  reverently  uncovered  his  head  while 
his  countrymen  filled  the  air  with  their  cheers ;  and, 
although  English  law  had  deprived  eight-tenths  of 
the  Irish  people  of  the  right  to  sit  in  it  as  members 
or  to  vote  for  members,  it  contained  a  patriot  minor- 
it>'',  led  by  Grattan  and  his  followers,  who  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  crisis  in  the  affairs  of  Great  Britain  to 
insist  on  legislative  independence  for  their  country. 
It  is  needless  to  recount  here  the  successive  laws  by 
which  the  mass  of  the  people  were  shut  out  of  Par- 
liament; enough  that  a  hundred  years  ago  only 
members  of  the  Church  of  England  could  sit  in  it  or 
vote  for  those  who  were'  candidates.  The  Catholics 
in  Ireland  were  seven-tenths  of  the  population ;  the 
Presbyterians  and  other  dissenters  were  another 
tenth:  all  were  excluded.  The  patriot  Protestant 
party  had  stoutly  resisted  the  attempts  of  the  gov- 
ernment to  send  troops  to  America ;  and  Grattan,  in 
a  famous  debate,  spoke  of  this  country  as  the  "  only 
hope  of  Ireland,  and  the  only  refuge  of  the  liberties 
of  mankind."  The  troops  were  nevertheless  ordered 
to  cross  the  sea,  and  then  a  new  condition  existed  in 
Ireland. 

For  the  first  time  since  the  conquest,  in  the  twelfth 
century,  she  vvras  practically  rid  of  English  soldiers. 


70  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

She  needed  none  for  the  preservation  of  internal 
peace ;  but  there  were  loud  threats  of  French  in- 
vasion, and  volunteers  were  called  for.  Under  the 
laws  the  Catholics  could  not  bear  arms ;  but  after  the 
Presbyterians  and  the  Protestants  began  enrolling,  a 
few  Catholics  were  admitted  to  the  ranks.  In  a  short 
time  sixty  thousand  men  were  enrolled ;  they  accept- 
ed arms  and  ammunition  from  the  government,  but 
decHned  commissions  and  elected  their  own  officers. 
The  volunteers,  having  no  foreign  French  foe  to  fight, 
turned  their  attention  to  politics,  and  they  made,  in 
convention,  these  specific  demands :  The  abolition 
of  all  restrictions  on  Irish  trade ;  the  restoration  of 
the  independence  of  the  Irish  Parliament,  which  had 
been  taken  away  by  an  act  passed  in  1495  forbidding 
the  Irish  Parliament  to  assemble  for  any  purpose  ex- 
cept to  pass  the  measures  proposed  by  the  English 
Crown — measures  for  the  ruin  of  Ireland  ;  and  the  en- 
largement of  the  constitutional  privileges  of  the  coun- 
try to  include  all  classes  of  the  people.  The  Crown 
had  no  means  of  resisting  these  demands  while  the 
American  war  lasted.  The  volunteers  drew  up  be- 
fore the  Parliament  building,  where  the  agents  of  the 
English  government  sat  as  the  ministers  of  the  Irish 
Parliament  and  people.  On  the  gaping  mouths  of 
their  cannon  were  suspended  placards  bearing  the 
suggestive  words,  "  Free  Trade  or  This ;"  and  thus 
they  awaited  the  surrender  of  the  Crown.  **  Free 
trade  "  did  not  mean  what  is  now  popularly  under- 
stood by  that  term :  it  meant  simply  the  abolition  of 


HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES.  *Jl 

the  restrictions  which  had  been  laid  upon  all  Irish 
commerce,  domestic  and  foreign.  Powerless,  the 
agents  of  the  Crown  yielded ;  the  trade  restrictions 
were  abolished.  Then  the  volunteers  demanded  that 
the  Irish  Parliament  be  given  the  right  to  make  all  the 
laws  for  Ireland.  Again  they  were  victorious ;  and 
for  eighteen  years  the  Parliament  that  sat  in  College 
Green,  although  composed  of  members  of  only  one 
Church,  and  that  the  Church  by  law  established,  made 
laws  for  Ireland,  and  made  them,  in  the  main,  wisely. 
The  third  demand  of  the  volunteers  was  not  granted 
— the  political  emancipation  of  their  Roman  Catholic 
brethren.  Had  Washington  not  caught  Cornwallis  at 
Yorktown,  that  right  too  could  have  been  obtained : 
unfortunately  for  Ireland,  the  American  war  termi- 
nated too  soon.  The  government  trifled  with  the 
volunteers  until  after  peace  was  declared ;  then,  the 
troops  returning  from  America  to  Ireland,  the  vol- 
unteers were  disbanded,  and  four-fifths  of  the  Irish 
people  remained  until  1829  deprived  of  civil  and  re- 
ligious liberty,  while  paying  enormous  taxes  to  the 
government  that  thus  kept  them  in  serfage. 

For  eighteen  years  the  Parliament  of  Ireland  was 
independent  of  the  English  Crown  in  its  right  to 
initiate  laws  for  the  domestic  government  of  Ire- 
land ;  and  during  that  period  "  it  was,  on  the  whole," 
writes  the  historian  Lecky,^  "  a  vigilant  and  intel- 
ligent guardian  of  the  interest  of  the  country."     It 

^  Author  of  Rationalistn  in  Europe ,  History  of  England  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,  etc. 


72  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

devoted  itself  with  assiduity  to  the  revival  of  the 
industries  of  Ireland  and  encouraged  those  which 
were  best  calculated  to  thrive  under  the  then  exist- 
ing commercial  conditions.  It  expended  taxation 
judiciously  for  public  works  and  improved  the  in- 
land navigation.  In  ten  years,  from  1782  to  1792, 
the  exports  more  than  doubled.  Sixteen  years  later 
Lord  Clare  wrote  that  there  "  is  not  a  nation  in  the 
habitable  globe  which  has  advanced  in  cultivation 
and  commerce,  in  agriculture  and  manufactures,  with 
the  same  rapidity  in  the  same  period."  Could  any 
stronger  argument  be  made  for  the  expediency  of 
permitting  Ireland  to  try  once  more  the  experiment 
of  making  her  own  domestic  laws  on  her  own  soil  ? 
But  it  was  intolerable  to  the  English  manufac- 
turers that  a  rival  should  again  be  found  in  the 
country  whose  manufactures  they  had  once  suc- 
ceeded in  destroying,  and  they  determined  to  de- 
stroy them  again.  A  different  method  was  required. 
The  creation  of  capital  in  Ireland  which  would  be 
invested  in  Irish  factories  was  most  to  be  feared. 
If  the  Irish  Parliament  continued  independent,  it 
would  comply  with  the  wishes  of  the  majority  of 
thp  Protestants  and  Presbyterians  and  emancipate 
the  Catholics.  Their  admission  into  Parliament 
would  make  that  body  thoroughly  national,  since 
all  classes  of  the  people  would  then  be  represent- 
ed in  it  A  thoroughly  national  Parliament  would 
speedily  reform  all  the  laws  by  which  Ireland  had 
been  reduced  to  the  condition  of  a  private  market 


HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES.  73 

for  the  English  manufacturer.  There  would  be  a 
reform  of  the  land  laws.  The  record  by  which  the 
land  of  the  Irish  people  had  been  boldly  stolen  from 
them  would  be  examined — with  what  results,  it  was 
too  easy  to  foresee.  If  the  land  were  restored  to 
the  natural  and  legal  owners,  the  money  received 
for  the  fruits  of  the  earth  would  belong  to  the  peo- 
ple residing  in  Ireland,  instead  of  being  drawn  out 
of  the  country  by  a  foreign  government  and  absentee 
landlords,  to  be  spent  in  England  or  on  the  Conti- 
nent. Peasant  proprietary  meant  home  capital  in 
Ireland  for  the  creation  of  manufactures  which  would 
interfere  with  the  prosperity  of  the  English  man- 
ufacturers. The  creation  of  capital  in  Ireland  to  be 
invested  in  productive  industry  was  to  be  prevented 
at  any  cost  and  by  resort  to  any  expedient.  The 
only  certain  expedient  was  the  abolition  of  the  Irish 
Parliament. 

The  bill  by  which  the  Parliament  was  abolished 
was  called  the  "  Act  of  Legislative  Union  with  Great 
Britain,"  and  it  was  passed  in  1800.  Since  then  there 
has  been  no  Parliament  in  Ireland. 

As  an  equivalent,  Ireland  has  one  hundred  and 
five  seats  in  the  imperial  House  of  Commons,  which 
is  composed  of  six  hundred  and  fifty-two  members. 
Less  than  a  fifth  of  that  body,  how  can  the  Irish 
members,  even  if  acting  as  a  unit  in  aims  and  meth- 
ods, accomplish  anything  for  the  benefit  of  the  trade 
of  Ireland? 

Had  the  woollen  trade  not  been  destroyed  in  1699, 


74  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

its  remarkable  development  and  the  favoring  natural 
conditions  of  the  country  must  speedily  have  laid 
the  solid  foundations  for  many  other  industries  in 
addition  to  those  which  existed  with  it.  The  Irish 
then  had  ships,  and  the  harbors  of  the  island  were 
crowded  with  masts ;  the  Irish  flag  was  m.et  on  the 
highways  of  the  ocean  until  forbidden  to  be  seen 
there ;  the  natural  capital  of  the  country  was  being 
utilized  at  home,  and  must  have  expanded  its  activ- 
ity into  new  fields  of  occupation  had  it  been  left 
free.  Had  the  woollen  trade  not  been  annihilated, 
it  is  entirely  reasonable  to  say  that  Ireland  would 
to-day  fill  a  place  in  history  very  different  from  that 
to  which  her  long  series  of  industrial  and  political 
misfortunes  have  consigned  her.  Instead  of  being  a 
country  without  manufactures,  tall  chimneys  would 
smoke  in  her  cities ;  the  incalculable  water-power 
that  courses  through  her  valleys  would  be  turning 
myriad  wheels ;  her  cabins  w^ould  be  cheerful  with 
thrift  and  her  children's  cheeks  red  with  plenty ;  her 
farmers  would  have  innumerable  exchanges  at  home 
for  which  they  would  sell  the  fruits  of  the  earth. 
There  would  be  no  famines,  for  money  enough  would 
circulate  in  the  country  to  buy  food  for  all  in  a  land 
that  can  feed  many  times  its  own  population.  In- 
stead of  "profound  indigence  and  chronic  anarchy," 
we  should  behold  there  peace,  prosperity  and  all  the 
blessings,  domestic  and  political,  which  only  peace 
and  prosperity  can  insure. 

It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  if  England  destroyed 


HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES.  75 

the  woollen  trade,  she  encouraged  the  linen  trade. 
For  reasons  too  obvious  for  assertion,  it  was  the 
woollen,  and  not  the  linen,  trade  that  would  have 
developed  parallel  industries  in  Ireland  and  built  the 
edifice  of  diversified  productiveness.  Venice  and 
the  other  Italian  states  carried  on  the  manufacture 
of  wool  until  the  countries  producing  the  raw  mate- 
rial manufactured  it;  then  the  Italian  manufacture 
dwindled  into  insignificance.  The  Flemings  under- 
sold the  Italians,  being  nearer  the  wool-growing 
countries ;  then  England  undersold  the  Flemings  for 
the  same  reason.  The  linen  trade  has  never  ex- 
pired, but  it  has  been  of  comparatively  little  sig- 
nificance in  promoting  other  industries.  So  long  as 
money  has  to  be  sent  out  of  the  country  for  the  best 
flaxseed,  it  is  impossible  that  it  should  be  effectual 
in  national  development. 

When  Ireland  was  robbed  of  her  manufactures, 
her  trade,  in  the  words  of  Swift,  was  "  glorious  and 
flourishing."  She  has  never  recovered  from  the 
shock,  nor  has  it  ever  been  possible  that  she  should. 
The  only  source  of  profit  left  was  the  land ;  that  was 
not  owned  by  the  people.  The  owners  have  done 
nothing  to  promote  the  establishment  of  manufac- 
tures. The  landlord  class  are  exclusively  a  con- 
suming class. 

From  official  returns  it  appears  that  there  are  only 
67,744  persons,  out  of  a  population  of  5,ooo,ocxD, 
employed  in  textile  industries  in  Ireland,  and  of 
these  60,000  are   in    149  flax-factories.     There  are 


76  THE  REASON  IRELAND 

8  cotton-factories,  60  woollen-factories,  i  worsted- 
factory,  4  hemp-factories,  ii  jute- factories,  2  silk- 
factories  ;  in  all,  235  factories  for  textile  products. 
Even  in  the  linen  trade  Ireland  has  not  of  late  years 
kept  her  lead.  In  1868  the  number  of  flax-factories  in 
England  and  Wales  was  128;  in  Scotland,  134;  and 
in  Ireland,  143.  In  1875  the  number  in  England 
and  Wales  was  141,  in  Scotland  159,  against  149  in 
Ireland.  In  1868  there  were  13  cotton-factories  in 
Ireland;  in  1875,  only  8.  The  poplin  trade  has  not 
declined,  but  it  has  not  grown.  There  has  been  an 
inconsiderable  increase  in  silk.  There  has  been  an 
increase  in  the  jute-manufacture;  ii  factories  are  re- 
ported in  1875,  against  2  in  1868,  and  the  persons 
employed  have  risen  from  20  to  2000.  There  is  also 
a  slight  increase  in  hemp.  And  what  of  all  the 
other  manufactured  articles  that  enter  into  the  daily 
life  of  even  the  common  people?  Ireland  has  to 
buy  them  all  from  England — millinery,  silk,  gloves, 
hats,  cloths,  cottons,  muslins,  ribbons,  soap,  candles, 
iron,  hardware,  glass,  furniture. 

No  more  eloquent  presentation  of  Ireland's  pov- 
erty, arising  from  her  want  of  exchanges,  can  be 
constructed  than  that  which  is  found  in  the  total 
of  her  exports  and  imports.  The  total  value  of 
her  exports  in  the  latest  available  official  figures  is 
;f  238,452 ;  the  total  of  her  imports,  ^7,901,899.  Had 
she  home  manufactures,  a  large  proportion  of  this  im- 
mense money  balance  on  the  wrong  side-  would  be 
kept  at  home  and   used  for  the  prosperity  of  the 


HAS  NO   MANUFACTURES.  77 

country.  So  long  as  a  foreign  legislature,  in  which 
she  is  without  effectual  representation,  continues  to 
neglect,  or,  when  not  neglecting,  to  "  coerce,"  her, 
there  can  be  no  adjustment  of  this  wrong  balance. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that  the  Land  League, 
especially  after  the  passage  of  the  bill  which  prom- 
ised but  did  not  afford  the  only  true  solution  of  the 
Irish  question — peasant  proprietary — should  under- 
take an  effort  to  revive  manufactures  in  Ireland.  A 
home-manufacture  association  was  formed,  with 
branches  throughout  Ireland ;  and  at  the  great 
national  convention  held  in  Dublin,  over  which 
Charles  Stewart  Parnell  presided,  and  which  was 
composed  of  delegates  chosen  by  the  Land  League, 
he-  said  that  if  Ireland  had  her  own  Parliament,  she 
could  foster  and  protect  her  industries  as  the  United 
States  protected  theirs,  but  under  the  rule  of  a  for- 
eign legislature  Ireland  could  do  nothing  by  law 
either  to  create  or  to  promote  manufactures.  "  But," 
he  continued,  "  we  can  protect  our  home  manufac- 
tures and  encourage  new  ones  by  our  unwritten  law, 
by  the  public  and  organized  opinion  of  the  great 
majority  of  the  Irish  people,  in  accordance  with 
whose  opinions  all  laws  governing  Ireland  ought  to 
be  made.  There  are  indirect  methods  of  protection. 
Let  us  buy  nothing  abroad  which  we  can  get  at 
home ;  what  we  must  buy  abroad  let  us  buy  in 
America ;  and  let  us  buy  nothing  in  England."  A 
resolution  embodying  this  declaration  was  unan- 
imously adopted,  and  its  spirit  was  instantly  felt 
0 


78  IRELAND  HAS  NO  MANUFACTURES. 

throughout  the  country.  Advertisements  appeared 
in  the  leading  journals  announcing  Irish  manufac- 
tures; the  shop-windows  were  filled  with  goods 
made  at  home ;  the  various  corporations  and  unions 
advertising  for  supplies  required  that  where  the  arti- 
cles called  for  could  be  made  in  Ireland,  only  the 
Irish-made  should  be  received ;  and  several  compa- 
nies were  formed  for  manufactures  in  the  cities. 
Shopkeepers  who  imported  what  they  could  get 
at  home  were  quietly  "boycotted,"  and,  short  as 
was  the  interval  between  the  meeting  of  the  national 
convention  and  the  suppression  of  the  League  by 
the  government,  it  had  succeeded  in  awaking  in  the 
minds  of  the  people  another  incentive  to  struggle 
determinedly  to  the  end  for  the  recovery  of  their 
inalienable  right  to  make  their  own  domestic  laws 
on  their  own  soil. 


CHAPTER    IV. 
flow  THE  PEOPLE  LOST  THEIR  PARLIAMENT. 

AS  the  next  agitation  in  Ireland  will  be  for  the 
restoration  of  the  national  Parliament,  it  is  de- 
sirable that  the  manner  in  which  that  Parliament  was 
abolished,  in  1800,  should  be  clearly  understood. 

Ireland  is  the  only  British  dependency  in  which 
there  is  not  a  legislature  for  making  domestic  laws. 
The  Home-Rule  demand  in  Ireland  is  that  that 
country  be  placed  in  the  same  relation  to  the  British 
Crown  as  are  all  its  other  dependencies — in  the  same 
relation  which  each  State  of  the  American  federation 
holds  to  the  national  government.  Each  American 
State  has  its  own  legislature  for  the  enactment  of 
laws  which  affect  only  the  State,  while  the  Congress 
at  Washington  makes  the  laws  which  affect  all  the 
States.  The  Home-Rule  demand  in  Ireland  is  that 
she  be  given  her  own  home  legislature  to  make  those 
laws  which  affect  her  only,  while  the  imperial  Par- 
liament should  continue  to  make  the  laws  for  the 
general  government  of  the  empire.  If  the  functions 
now  discharged  by  each  State  legislature  were  usurp- 
ed by  Congress,  Americans  would  quickly  realize 

79 


8o  IIOIV  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

the  reasonableness  of  the  demand  for  Home  Rule  in 
Ireland.  The  Home-Rule  agitators  there  have  ask- 
ed nothing  except  that  Ireland  make  on  her  own 
soil,  in  a  legislature  elected  by  all  of  her  own  people, 
the  laws  which  regulate  her  domestic  affairs.  Ire- 
land, in  making  this  demand,  simply  asks  the  priv- 
ilege of  attending  to  her  own  housekeeping  instead 
of  having  it  ordered  and  disordered  by  the  head  of 
the  house  across  the  street.  As  to  the  affairs  of  the 
street  itself  the  heads  of  both  houses  should  consult. 

England  can  keep  her  own  house  on  the  one  side 
of  the  Channel ;  Ireland  wants  to  keep  her  house  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  Channel.  In  matters  outside 
their  respective  houses  they  should  be  required  to 
consult  for  the  common  good. 

In  their  present  connection  England  is  simply  a 
tax-assessor  and  tax-collector  in  Ireland,  and  charges 
so  exorbitant  a  commission  that  the  employer  would 
like  to  dispense  with  her  services  and  substitute  some 
of  the  family  to  attend  to  the  business  for  consider- 
ably less  pay. 

History  is  wanting  in  evidence  that  one  country 
ever  assessed,  collected  and  expended  taxes  in  an- 
other country  economically,  wisely  or  honestly. 

The  abolition  of  the  Irish  Parliament  was  accom- 
plished by  corruption  and  misrepresentation.  Eng- 
lish statesmen  have  affirmed  this  so  often,  and  the 
official  records  of  the  government  so  boldly  confess 
it,  that  it  is  useless  to  repeat  it  by  way  of  argument 
for  the  reparation  of  the  gigantic  wrong  then  inflict- 


now  THE   PARLIAMENT   WAS  LOST.  8 1 

ed.  But,  as  Lord  Cornwallis — of  whose  achieve- 
ments in  this  country  we  have  heard  something — 
was  the  chief  officer  of  the  Crown  in  Ireland  when 
the  Parhament  was  abohshed,  it  will  be  interesting  to 
American  readers  to  hear  the  story  of  that  event  as 
it  were  from  his  own  lips. 

It  is  not  true  that  the  Irish  Parliament  ever  was  a 
national  Parliament  as  we  now  understand  that  term, 
because  the  entire  people  of  Ireland  were  not  repre- 
sented in  it.  But  it  began  to  show  a  national  spirit 
when  Sir  Edward  Poynings  was  the  chief  officer  of 
the  English  Crown  in  that  country,  and  to  extinguish 
it  he  procured  the  passage  by  the  English  Parliament 
of  what  is  known  as  Poynings's  law.  It  was,  in  sub- 
stance, that  the  Irish  Parliament  should  meet  only 
when  the  king  of  England  desired  it  to  meet,  that  it 
should  meet  only  at  his  pleasure,  and  that  when  it 
had  done  his  business  in  Ireland  the  members  should 
go  home.  That  law  was  passed  in  England  in  1495  ; 
of  course  it  had  to  be  accepted  in  Ireland.  A  Par- 
liament thus  fettered  was  indeed  no  Parliament,  but 
in  course  of  time  astute  men  in  it  found  ways  to  do 
slight  favors  for  the  country  without  the  previous 
permission  of  the  Crown;  and  when  the  religious 
fanaticism  of  the  subsequent  period  introduced  new 
elements  of  distress  into  Irish  life,  it  was  deemed  pru- 
dent to  expel  the  Catholics  from  their  seats  and  to 
deprive  them  of  the  right  to  vote  for  Protestants  who 
were  candidates.  Yet  the  Catholics  were  seven- 
tenths  of  the  population,  according  to  Lord  Corn- 


32  HOPV  THE   PARLIAMENT   WAS  LOST. 

wallis.  A  Parliament  which  contains  no  represent- 
atives of  that  proportion  of  the  people  of  a  country 
can  scarcely  be  designated  a  national  Parliament. 

But  there  were  factors  in  its  composition  which 
rendered  it  less  than  representative  of  the  minority 
who  were  eligible.  Two  hundred  and  sixteen  mem- 
bers represented  only  manors.  Manor-proprietors 
who  sent  into  the  Commons  men  acceptable  to  the 
government  were  rewarded  with  peerages,  and  thus 
the  Upper  and  Lower  Houses  were  simultaneously 
degraded  and  corrupted.  Still  further  to  withdraw 
the  Parliament  from  public  opinion,  should  any  be 
developed  by  events,  the  Lower  House,  unless  dis- 
solved by  the  Crown,  continued  for  an  entire  reign. 
The  Irish  Parliament  of  George  HI.  continued  for 
thirty-three  years. 

Nevertheless,  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  Irish  Parliament  began  to  feel  the  faint 
throbs  of  a  national  pulse.  Supine  under  their 
yoke,  the  Catholics,  having  no  share  in  the  govern- 
ment, devoted  themselves  as  best  they  could  to  those 
forms  of  production  which  were  possible  in  a  coun- 
Xxy  in  which  manufactures  might  easily  be  promoted 
with  capital.  The  Presbyterians,  suffering  like  the 
Catholics  on  account  of  their  religious  views,  en- 
gaged largely  in  manufacture,  especially  in  the 
North ;  and,  although  the  land  had  been  confiscated 
and  Catholics  could  not  even  buy  it  at  any  price,  the 
English  who  had  settled  on  the  estates  taken  from 
the  native  owners  became  interested  in  the  material 


HOW  THE  PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.  83 

growth  of  a  country  which  they  intended  to  make 
their  home.  Enough  money  was  in  circulation  to 
keep  a  healthy  feeling  between  the  agricultural  and 
the  manufacturing  classes,  and  some  of  the  manufac- 
tures attained  such  proportions  as  to  arouse  the  jeal- 
ousy of  the  English  producers,  who  immediately 
appealed  to  the  king  and  the  Parliament  of  England 
to  suppress  in  Ireland  every  manufacture  which 
would  rival  any  in  England,  and  to  tolerate  in  Ire- 
land only  such  industries  as  would  help  the  English 
market.  In  principle,  the  Irish  should  be  permitted 
to  make  only  such  articles  as  the  English  could  not 
sell  to  them.  Law  after  law  was  passed  in  England 
for  the  destruction  of  Irish  manufactures;  the  fin- 
ishing blow  was  given  in  the  beginning  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  by  the  prohibition  of  the  last  that 
remained,  the  woollen  trade.  Irish  ships,  which 
had  been  met  on  every  ocean  highway,  were  ex- 
cluded from  the  sea,  and  the  country  sank  into 
abject  poverty,  whose  depths  reached  the  famine- 
pits  at  frequent  intervals. 

The  vitality  of  the  Irish  must  have  astonished 
their  foreign  government.  Commerce  by  water  was 
practically  abolished  except  with  England,  but  the 
domestic  trade  revived  slightly  from  time  to  time, 
and  as  a  little  capital  came  to  the  despondent  man- 
ufacturers they  began  to  appeal  to  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment to  help  them  by  endeavoring  to  obtain  a  mod- 
ification of  the  laws  by  which  Irish  industry  had  been 
destroyed.     These  manufacturers  were  chiefly  Prot- 


84  I/O IV   THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST 

estants,  and  they  received  countenance — in  some 
degree  at  least — from  the  Enghsh  land-owners  in 
Ireland  who  had  money  to  spare ;  while  the  Presby- 
terians, who  were  so  busy  in  Ulster,  were  strength- 
ened by  accessions  from  Scotland,  Irish  land  and 
water-power  being  so  cheap  that  many  availed  them- 
selves of  the  chance  to  better  their  condition  by  em- 
igrating from  the  neighboring  country,  bringing  at 
least  some  money  into  Ireland.  It  was  the  Prot- 
estant and  Presbyterian  manufacturers  who  first  im- 
bued the  Irish  Parliament  with  national  sympathy 
and  aspiration. 

It  is  proper  to  say  "  Protestant  and  Presbyter- 
ian," because  in  those  days  Presbyterians  were  not 
Protestants :  that  designation  belonged  exclusively  to 
members  of  the  Church  by  law  established.  It  is 
worthy  of  mention,  for  justice'  sake,  that  it  was  the 
Protestants,  and  not  the  Presbyterians,  w^ho  founded 
Orangeism  in  Ireland  :  neither  Catholics  nor  Pres- 
byterians were  eligible  for  admission  to  the  original 
Orange  lodges.  The  object  of  Orangeism  was  one 
toward  which  the  Presbyterians  had  shown  decided 
animosity — the  perpetuation  of  English  rule  in  Ire- 
land ;  on  the  contrary,  the  Presbyterians  were  accused, 
and  justly,  of  downright?  democratic  tendencies. 

The  temper  of  the  Irish  Parliament  in  the  second 
half  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  one  to  give  the 
English  Crown  some  solicitude.  Lords  were  sent 
over  as  viceroys,  and  they  selected  as  their  represent- 
atives in  the  two  Houses  the  ablest  men  who  could 


i^ 


B«,5sJfe* 


HOW  THE  PARLIAMENT   WAS  LOST.  8/ 

be  induced  to  accept  official  posts,  with  the  under- 
standing that  their  duty  was  to  the  king  of  England, 
and  not  to  the  people  of  Ireland.  Gradually  an  op- 
position had  grown  bold,  energetic  and  sagacious  ; 
while  a  literature  outside  Parliament,  of  which  Swift 
and  Molyneux  were  the  parents,  helped  to  organ- 
ize public  opinion,  which  reacted  upon  Parliament. 
When  the  American  war  broke  out  there  was  un- 
disguised joy  among  the  masses  of  the  Irish  people ; 
the  courage  of  the  opposition  in  Parliament  received 
substantial  access  of  resolution,  although  the  prevail- 
ing hypocrisy  in  public  affairs  required  that  formal 
sympathy  should  be  expressed  with  the  Crown  in  its 
reverses ;  but  the  victories  of  the  rebels  were  sin- 
cerely celebrated  with  prudent  decorum  by  the 
patriots  in  and  out  of  Parliament. 

The  king's  necessities  in  America  precipitated  an 
altogether  unprecedented  state  of  affairs  in  Ireland. 
All  the  troops  that  could  be  sent  to  the  colonies  were 
urgently  needed  there,  and  the  regulars  in  Ireland 
were  demanded,  although,  with  invasion  threatened 
by  France,  their  withdrawal  was  a  confessed  men- 
ace to  the  safety  of  the  Crown  in  Ireland.  Neverthe- 
less, they  were  withdrawn  after  a  debate  which  no  stu- 
dent of  great  oratory  can  have  missed — that  in  which 
Flood  appeared  as  the  advocate  of  the  Crown  and 
Grattan  as  the  exponent  of  the  sympathy  of  the  Irish 
people  with  the  American  rebels.  Flood  had  enjoyed 
the  confidence  of  all  classes  of  the  people  until  he 

entered  the  Irish  Cabinet ;  from  that  moment  he  was 
6 


88  HOW  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

looked  upon  with  suspicion ;  and  when  he  described 
the  troops  to  be  sent  out  from  Ireland  to  America  as 
**  armed  negotiators,"  Grattan  poured  out  upon  him 
a  withering  invective  from  whose  effects  he  never  re- 
covered, characterizing  him  as  standing  "  with  a  met- 
aphor in  his  mouth  and  a  bribe  in  his  pocket,  a  cham- 
pion against  the  rights  of  America,  the  only  hope  of 
Ireland,  the  refuge  of  the  liberties  of  mankind."  The 
regulars  having  been  sent,  Ireland  was  actually  with- 
out defence,  and  the  formation  of  volunteers  began 
with  the  consent  of  the  government.  "  The  cry  to 
arms,"  writes  Lecky,  '*  passed  through  the  land  and 
was  speedily  responded  to  by  all  parties  and  all 
creeds.  Beginning  among  the  Protestants  of  the 
North,  the  movement  soon  spread,  though  in  a  less 
degree,  to  other  parts  of  the  island,  and  the  war  of 
religions  and  castes  that  had  so  long  divided  the 
people  vanished  as  a  dream." 

The  character  of  the  volunteers  was  unique.  Fur- 
nished with  arms  by  the  government,  they  paid  their 
own  expenses,  refused  commissions  from  the  Crown, 
elected  their  own  officers,  and  became  speedily  a 
threat  instead  of  a  defence.  Having  no  battles  to 
fight  with  France,  they  devoted  their  moral  force  to 
coercing  the  English  government;  and  with  their 
formidable  numbers,  estimated  to  have  been  from 
sixty  thousand  to  a  hundred  thousand,  armed,  equip- 
ped and  drilled,  with  not  a  battalion  in  either  island 
to  confront  them,  they  became  the  masters  of  Par- 
liament and  compelled  it  to  assume  a  virtue  which 


now   THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.  89 

it  had  not:  they  compelled  it  to  nationaHze  itself. 
Poynings's  law  was  still  in  force;  they  demanded  its 
repeal.  All  the  prohibitory  laws  which  had  strangled 
industry  and  trade  in  Ireland  were  still  in  force;  they 
demanded  their  repeal.  The  penal  laws  by  which 
seven-tenths  of  their  countrymen  were  excluded  from 
participation  in  the  government  of  their  country  were 
still  in  force ;  they  demanded  their  repeal. 

It  has  always  been  characteristic  of  English  deal- 
ings with  Ireland  never  to  grant  her  any  concession 
except  under  compulsion  of  force,  and  then  to  grant 
less  than  is  demanded.  It  was  only  as  a  preventive 
of  insurrection,  the  duke  of  Wellington  told  the  stub- 
born dullard  who  wore  the  crown  in  1829,  that  Cath- 
olic emancipation  was  conceded;  but  coupled  with  it 
was  a  suffrage  law  which  disfranchised  many  of  those 
who  had  become  voters  while  the  Irish  Parliament 
was  independent,  as  we  shall  soon  see  it.  The  move- 
ment to  effect  repeal  of  the  Act  of  Union  would  prob- 
ably have  succeeded  had  O'Connell  not  been  too  old 
and  feeble  to  maintain  the  vigor  of  the  people.  The 
present  first  minister  of  Great  Britain  is  authority  for 
the  confession,  openly  made,  that  the  abolition  of  the 
Irish  Church  Establishment,  the  hoary  relic  of  penal 
law,  was  made  necessary  by  Fenianism,  which  set  out 
on  a  different  errand.  When  the  secret  records  of 
these  disturbed  days  shall  be  uncovered  by  another 
generation,  or  when  their  story  is  told  by  a  candid 
politician,  the  world  will  read  that  the  Land  Act 
of  1 88 1  was  wrung  from  the  Crown  by  ministerial 


90        now  THE  parliament  was  lost. 

assurance  that  if  some  relief  were  not  allowed  the 
Irish  tenants  insurrection  would  inevitably  ensue. 

To  resist  the  demands  of  the  volunteers  in  1782 
was  impossible ;  to  grant  them  all  the  Crown  would 
not  consent.  But  Poynings's  law  was  repealed ;  the 
Irish  Parliament  was  conceded  the  exclusive  right  to 
legislate  for  Ireland ;  the  trade  restrictions  were  all 
removed.  But  the  third  demand — political  equality 
for  all  classes  of  the  people — was  withheld ;  and  be- 
fore the  volunteers  could  coerce  it  the  government 
disbanded  them. 

We  have  reached  the  Irish  Parliament  as  Corn- 
waUis  found  it.  It  had  enjoyed  independence  for 
sixteen  years.  His  mission  was  to  abolish  it  be- 
cause its  independence  had  unfettered  the  manufac- 
turers of  Ireland,  to  the  anger  and  injury  of  the 
English  manufacturers ;  because  there  was  every 
reason  to  believe  that,  as  it  had  allowed  the  Cath- 
olics the  right  to  vote  for  members,  it  would  soon 
allow  them  the  right  to  be  members  and  to  enter 
the  race  of  life  on  the  same  terms  as  those  possessed 
by  the  non-Catholic  minority;  and  because  there  was 
danger  that  when  all  the  people  united  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  their  country  in  a  native  congress,  they 
would  dispense  with  the  services  of  a  foreign  Crown. 
It  was  necessary,  therefore,  to  abolish  the  independ- 
ent Irish  Parliament  in  order  to  consolidate  the  Brit- 
ish empire. 

All  representative  bodies  fluctuate  in  the  relative 
merit  of  their  personnel.      No  country  has  always 


now  THE   PARLIAMENT   WAS  LOST.  9 1 

been  able  to  command  at  all  times  the  services  of 
its  ablest  and  most  virtuous  sons.  When  the  Irish 
Parliament,  with  eighty  thousand  volunteers  at  its 
back,  in  1782  declared  itself  independent,  removed 
the  restrictions  which  a  foreign  Parliament  had  placed 
upon  Irish  manufactures  and  commerce,  and  wisely 
fostered  every  form  of  industry,  it  contained  a  very 
large  proportion  of  able  and  determined  men,  al- 
though the  vast  majority  of  the  people  had  no  voice 
in  its  halls;  in  1798,  when  Cornwallis  proceeded 
on  his  mission  to  abolish  it,  many  of  the  ablest 
members  of  the  former  period  were  absent.  Nei- 
ther Grattan  nor  Curran  was  there — the  one  the  most 
effective  wit,  the  other  the  most  eminent  patriot  and 
the  most  powerful  orator,  of  the  time.  In  1782  the 
government  councillors  were  weak  and  common- 
place, while  the  patriots  had  the  genius,  the  el- 
oquence, the  courage,  of  the  country  on  their  side ; 
in  1798  the  government  had  Castlereagh  for  chief 
secretar>%  and  a  host  of  mercenary  men  whose  facul- 
ties had  been  sharpened  by  necessity  and  who  were 
as  keen  as  they  were  unscrupulous.  In  1782  the 
Parliament  was  literally  on  fire  with  patriotic  ardor, 
and  men  were  ready  and  anxious  to  make  sacrifices, 
if  necessary,  of  personal  interests  for  the  general 
good  of  the  whole  people;  in  1798  a  spasm  of  sel- 
fish office-seeking  was  in  progress,  and  place  and 
promotion  were  the  chief  objects  of  a  large  number 
in  Parliament  and  of  their  friends,  who  hoped  to  ob- 
tain one  or  the  other  throufrh  their  influence. 


92  I/OJV  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

Let  it  not  be  forgotten  that  the  Parhament  in  1798 
contained  no  representatives  of  the  majority  of  the 
Irish  people,  and  that  the  minority  represented  was 
composed  in  considerable  part  of  manor-proprietors 
and  their  placemen,  of  Englishmen,  Scotchmen  and 
other  aliens  who  had  no  permanent  interest  in  Ire- 
land. It  ought  also  be  recalled  that  the  Upper  House 
in  Ireland  never  contained  a  dozen  men  of  mark. 
The  Protestant  lords  saw  in  the  Protestant  Crown 
exclusive  privileges  for  themselves  which  they  could 
not  hope  for  after  the  Catholics  of  Ireland  obtain- 
ed their  political  rights ;  a  few  Catholic  lords  were 
vacillating  and  nerveless,  incapable  of  serving  their 
country  and  willing  to  sell  out  her  independence  for 
their  own  profit. 

The  task  of  Cornwallis  was  not  so  difficult,  there- 
fore, as  it  would  have  been  a  few  years  earlier.  The 
English  agents,  who  had  been  acquainted  with  the 
designs  of  the  Crown,  had  ample  time  to  pack  the 
Lower  House  as  fully  as  possible  with  persons  ex- 
pressly selected  for  the  object  in  view.  The  borough 
system  quite  as  truly  as  gold  corrupted  and  extin- 
guished the  Irish  Parliament.  It  was  declared  on 
the  floor  of  the  Lower  House  that  less  than  ninety 
individuals  returned  a  majority  of  that  body.  Yet  so 
tenacious  was  the  little  flicker  of  national  spirit  which 
still  burned  there  that  as  soon  as  the  intentions  of  the 
lord-lieutenant  became  publicly  known  the  people 
arose,  and  by  their  determined  resistance  kept  the 
imperial  corruptionists  at  bay  for  more  than  a  }^car. 


HOW  THE   PARLIAMENT   WAS  LOST.  93 

Cornwallis's  description  of  the  men  who  were  at 
that  time  foremost  under  English  protection  in  ruin- 
ing Ireland  is  the  best  possible  explanation  of  his 
final  victory  in  buying  them  up  and  destroying  the 
legislative  body  which  was  cursed  by  their  presence. 
On  July  8,  1798,  he  writes  to  the  duke  of  Portland  as 
follows,  the  letter  being  marked  "  private  and  con- 
fidential "  (his  allusion  to  the  rebels  needs  no  com- 
ment) :  "  The  principal  persons  in  this  country  and 
the  members  of  both  Houses  of  Parliament  are  in 
general  averse  to  all  acts  of  clemency,  and  although 
they  do  not  express,  and  are  perhaps  too  much  heat- 
ed to  see,  the  ultimate  effect  which  their  violence 
must  produce,  would  pursue  measures  that  could 
only  terminate  in  the  extirpation  of  the  greater  num- 
ber of  the  inhabitants  and  in  the  utter  destruction  of 
the  country.  The  words  *  papists  '  and  *  priests  '  are 
for  ever  in  their  mouths,  and  by  their  unaccountable 
policy  they  would  drive  four-fifths  of  the  community 
into  irreconcilable  rebellion.  ...  I  should  be  very 
ungrateful  if  I  did  not  acknowledge  the  obligations  I 
owe  to  Lord  Castlereagh,  whose  abilities,  temper  and 
judgment  have  been  of  the  greatest  use  to  me,  and 
who  has  on  every  occasion  shown  his  sincere  and  un- 
prejudiced attachment  to  the  general  interests  of  the 
British  empire."  At  other  times  the  noble  lord  wrote 
of  Castlereagh,  "  He  is  so  cold  that  nothing  can  warm 
him ;"  but  when  he  wished  to  give  him  a  persuasive 
recommendation  to  the  favor  of  the  imperial  govern- 
ment he  pleaded  that  he  knew  no  favors  were  for  the 
G 


94  ^^OIV  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

Irish,  but  that  an  exception  should  be  made  in  the 
case  of  Castlereagh :  "  he  is  so  very  unhke  an  Irish- 
man." When  the  news  of  the  arch-traitor's  suicide 
was  spread  it  was  another  EngHsh  lord  (Byron)  who 
wrote : 

"  So  he  has  cut  his  throat  at  last !     He  ?  who? 
The  man  who  cut  his  country's  long  ago." 

In  a  letter  to  Pitt  dated  July  20,  Cornwallis  makes 
the  first  avowal  of  his  chief  business  in  Ireland.  He 
informs  the  minister  that  he  does  not  see  at  that  mo- 
ment the  most  distant  encouragement  for  the  project. 
A  few  days  later  he  tells  Ross  that  there  is  no  law  in 
the  country  except  martial  law,  and  that  numberless 
murders  are  committed  by  his  people  without  any 
process  or  examination.  His  yeomanry,  he  adds, 
"  are  in  the  style  of  the  loyalists  of  America,  only 
more  numerous  and  powerful  and  a  thousand  times 
more  ferocious."  Many  letters  are  full  of  the  loath- 
some details  of  betrayals  of  the  rebels,  of  the  sums 
paid  informers,  the  artifices  resorted  to  to  obtain  the 
secrets  of  suspects,  and  the  rewards  held  out  to  the 
base  and  the  infamous.  In  August,  Cornwallis  issued 
general  orders  appealing  to  the  regimental  officers  to 
assist  in  putting  a  stop  to  the  licentious  conduct  of 
the  troops ;  in  September  his  thoughts  revert  to  the 
Parliament.  The  Catholics  who  have  kept  out  of  it 
by  the  determination  of  His  Majesty  must  be  con- 
ciliated. Some  advantages  must  be  held  out  to  them 
in  the  proposed  union  of  the  two  countries — "  the 


HOW  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.  95 

union  of  the  shark  with  its  prey,"  as  Lord  Byron 
termed  it.  The  lord-heutenant  has  been  talking  with 
some  of  his  official  friends,  and  is  beginning  to  think 
that  they  would  not  be  averse  to  the  union,  provided 
it  were  a  Protestant  union ;  but  they  would  not  hear 
of  the  Catholics  sitting  in  the  imperial  Parliament. 
This  bigotry  does  not  please  him,  nor  does  he  see  in 
it  the  promise  of  success.  He  writes  Ross  that  he  is 
convinced  that  until  the  Catholics  are  admitted  into 
a  general  participation  of  rights  there  will  be  no  peace 
or  safety  in  Ireland.  A  private  and  somewhat  alarm- 
ing letter  is  despatched  to  the  duke  of  Portland  by 
hand.  The  progress  of  rebellion,  the  disaffection  of 
the  Catholics  and  the  apparent  resolution  of  the  dis- 
contented to  effect  a  general  insurrection  convince 
Cornwallis  that  if  the  union  be  not  speedily  accom- 
plished it  will  soon  be  too  late  to  attempt  it.  In  Oc- 
tober, Cornwallis  writes  Pitt :  "  It  has  always  appear- 
ed to  me  a  desperate  measure  for  the  British  govern- 
ment to  make  an  irrevocable  alliance  with  a  small 
party  in  Ireland  (which  party  has  derived  all  its  con- 
sequence from,  and  is  in  fact  entirely  dependent  upon, 
the  British  government)  to  wage  eternal  war  against 
the  papists  and  Presbyterians  of  this  kingdom,  which 
two  sects,  from  the  fairest  calculations,  compose  about 
nine-tenths  of  the  community."  In  the  same  letter 
he  prophesies  that  if  Catholic  emancipation  is  not 
granted  then,  it  will  be  extorted  at  a  later  time — a 
prophecy  literally  fulfilled  and  acknowledged  by  the 
duke  of  Wellington  thirty  years  afterward. 


96  HO IV   THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

All  the  transactions  in  progress  at  this  time  are 
either  unknown  to  Cornvvallis,  or  he  leaves  the  men- 
tion of  some  of  them  to  others,  or  his  editor — -care- 
ful of  his  reputation — omits  them.  In  November  the 
lord-lieutenant  writes  to  Ross :  "  Things  have  gone 
too  far  to  admit  of  a  change,  and  the  principal  per- 
sons in  this  country  have  received  assurances  from 
the  English  ministers  w^hich  cannot  be  retracted." 
No  information  of  the  nature  of  these  assurances 
appears  previously  in  the  correspondence,  but  the 
evidence  is  accessible  elsewhere.  Pitt  writes  from 
Downing  street  to  Cornwallis  that  the  Speaker  of 
the  Irish  House  of  Commons  (John  Foster)  had 
been  in  London,  and  had  conversed  with  him  on  the 
proposed  union.  Pitt  believed  he  would  not  obstruct 
the  measure,  and  if  it  could  be  made  personally  pal- 
atable to  him  he  might  give  it  fair  support.  The 
premier  suggests  that  the  prospect  of  an  English 
peerage  be  held  out  to  him,  with  some  ostensible 
situation.  Time  proved  the  minister  did  the  Speaker 
gross  injustice;  Foster  had  been  cautious  in  talking 
with  the  minister,  and  the  latter  was  so  accustomed 
to  thinking  that  every  man  had  his  price  that  he  mis- 
construed Foster's  wariness  into  the  solicitation  of  a 
bribe. 

A  week  or  two  later  Cornwallis,  in  a  letter  to  Ross, 
expresses  his  frank  opinion  of  the  men  in  Ireland 
who  were  acting  for  the  English  government  in  car- 
rying on  the  project  of  the  union :  "  They  are  de- 
tested by  everybody  but  their  immediate  followers, 


HOW  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.  97 

and  have  no  influence  but  what  is  founded  on  the 
grossest  corruption." 

Yet  the  enterprise  moved  slowly  and  painfully. 
Castlereagh  admits  to  a  friend  that  "  there  is  no  pre- 
disposition in  its  favor,"  but,  while  the  bar  is  almost 
a  unit  against  it,  the  Orangemen  are  for  it,  believing 
that  the  Catholics  will  oppose  it ;  he  hopes  that  the 
arrangement  proposed  for  the  Catholic  clergy  will 
secure  their  support.  No  arrangement,  in  fact,  was 
ever  made  for  them,  but  a  few  favored  the  measure  ; 
among  these  was  the  archbishop  of  Dublin.  Castle- 
reagh closes  this  letter  with  an  important  statement : 
"  The  principal  provincial  newspapers  have  been  se- 
cured, and  every  attention  will  be  paid  to  the  press 
generally."  November  27,  Cornwallis  writes  a  secret 
letter  to  the  duke  of  Portland,  describing  minutely 
the  steps  he  had  felt  it  his  "  duty  to  make  in  conse- 
quence of  Your  Grace's  despatch  enclosing  heads  of 
a  union  between  the  two  kingdoms  ;"  and  the  steps 
must  have  been  humiliating  enough  to  a  man  of 
Cornwallis's  professed  disgust  for  such  atrocious 
business.  He  summarizes  the  results  of  his  ap- 
proaching "  the  most  leading  characters "  on  the 
subject :  Lord  Shannon  is  favorable,  but  will  not 
declare  himself  openly  until  he  sees  that  his  doing 
so  "  can  answer  some  purpose ;"  "  Lord  Ely  (relying 
on  the  Crown  in  a  matter  personal  to  himself)  is  pre- 
pared to  give  it  his  utmost  support ;"  Lord  Yelver- 
ton  had  no  hesitation  about  it :  he  was  made  Vis- 
count  Avonmore ;    Lord  Perry  would   not   pledge 


98  BO IV  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

himself  against  it:    he   had  a  government  pension 
of  three  thousand  pounds  a  year. 

In  December,  CornwalHs  writes  to  the  duke  of 
Portland  that  Speaker  Foster  and  Sir  John  Parnell, 
chancellor  of  the  exchequer — the  great-grandfather 
of  Charles  Stewart  Parnell — are  still  in  London,  and 
that  he  hopes  they  will  not  have  left  it  before  Castle- 
reagh  shall  arrive  there  :  "  Some  of  the  king's  Irish 
servants  appear  to  be  the  most  impracticable  in  their 
opinions,  and  I  feel  confident  that  Your  Grace  will 
leave  no  means  untried  to  impress  these  gentlemen 
more  favorably  before  their  return  to  this  kingdom." 
The  plain  hint  was  not  lost — ^^with  what  result,  the 
final  record  will  show.  Lord  Castlereagh  bore  a 
letter  to  Pitt  in  which  CornwalHs  declared :  "  That 
every  man  in  this  most  corrupt  country  should 
consider  the  important  question  before  us  in  no 
other  point  of  view  than  as  it  may  be  likely  to  pro- 
mote his  private  objects  of  ambition  or  avarice  will 
not  surprise  you  " — an  allegation  true  as  to  Pitt,  who 
proceeded  solely  on  that  assumption,  for  he  was  not 
silly  enough  to  believe  that  any  man  of  sound  sense 
in  Ireland  would  be  moved  by  other  motives  than 
avarice  or  'ambition  in  betraying  the  right  of  his 
country  to  make  her  own  laws  under  a  British 
constitution  guaranteeing  her  that  right.  But  it 
was  a  careless  exaggeration  on  the  part  of  Corn- 
walHs :  he  approached  men  whom  he  could  not  cor- 
rupt. A  great  meeting  of  the  bar  held  that  month 
revealed  the  fact  that  only  thirty-two  were  in  favor 


HOW  THE  PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.  99 

of  the  measure,  while  five  times  as  many  opposed  it ; 
and  of  those  thirty-two,  five  only  were  left  without 
government  appointment.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  the 
five  had  been  won  by  what  Barrington  calls  "simple 
metallic  corruption."  Intimidation  was  tried  with 
more  or  less  success  on  those  who  were  excep- 
tionally dangerous;  in  the  beginning  of  the  year 
1799  it  was  even  proposed  to  disgown  Saurin,  one 
of  the  ablest  Protestant  lawyers.  The  threat  was 
not  carried  out ;  and  after  the  union  had  been  con- 
summated he  accepted  the  ofifice  of  attorney-general 
for  Ireland,  and  prosecuted  Sheil  energetically  for 
speeches  not  half  so  '*  treasonable "  in  behalf  of 
Catholic  emancipation  as  his  own  had  been  against 
the  union.  Plunkett,  another  of  the  patriots  of  the 
bar  of  1799,  accepted  the  ofifice  of  solicitor-general 
soon  after  the  passage  of  the  act :  it  was  he  who 
prosecuted  Robert  Emmet. 

That  "  simple  metallic  corruption  "  was  being  car- 
ried boldly  on  there  was  no  attempt  to  conceal  in 
government  circles.  January  10,  Castlereagh  ac- 
knowledges the  receipt  of  five  thousand  pounds 
from  the  English  secret-service  fund,  and  adds: 
"Arrangements  with  a  view  to  further  communi- 
cations of  the  same  nature  will  be  highly  advanta- 
geous, and  the  duke  of  Portland  may  depend  on  their 
being  carefully  applied."  Cornwallis  was  busy  try- 
ing to  make  converts  among  those  then  holding 
positions  under  the  government.  He  writes  to  the 
duke  of  Portland  that,  finding  Sir  John  Parnell  de- 


lOO         HOW  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

termined  not  to  support  the  union,  "  I  have  notified 
to  him  his  dismission  from  the  office  of  chancellor  of 
the  exchequer,  and  I  shall  pursue  the  same  line  of 
conduct  without  favor  or  partiality  whenever  I  may 
think  it  will  tend  to  promote  the  success  of  the  meas- 
ure." 

Cornwallis  may  have  had  occasion  to  deeply  re- 
gret his  failure  to  corrupt  Parnell ;  for  after  the  first 
test  vote  in  the  Commons — which  was  a  great  sur- 
prise to  the  government — the  lord-lieutenant  writes 
to  the  duke  of  Portland :  "  I  have  now  only  to  ex- 
press my  sincere  regret  to  Your  Grace  that  the  prej- 
udices prevailing  amongst  the  members  of  the  Com- 
mons, countenanced  and  encouraged  as  they  have 
been  by  the  Speaker  and  Sir  John  Parnell,  are  infi- 
nitely too  strong  to  afford  me  any  prospect  of  bring- 
ing this  measure,  with  any  chance  of  success,  into 
discussion  in  the  course  of  the  present  session." 

The  test  vote  should  not  have  so  deeply  discour- 
aged Cornwallis.  It  is  thus  analyzed  by  Barrington  : 
The  House  was  composed  of  three  hundred,  of  whom 
eighty-four  were  absent.  Of  the  two  hundred  and 
sixteen  who  voted,  one  hundred  and  eleven  were 
against  the  government;  and  of  the  one  hundred 
and  five  who  voted  with  it,  sixty-nine  were  holding 
government  offices,  nineteen  were  rewarded  with 
office,  one  was  openly  bought  during  debate,  and 
thirteen  were  created  peers  or  their  wives  were  made 
peeresses  for  their  votes.  Three  were  supposed  to 
be  uninfluenced.      The    absentees  were  presumably 


HOJV  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.         lOI 

against  the  union ;  were  they  for  it,  the  government 
could  have  required  their  attendance.  Castlereagh 
addressed  himself  assiduously  to  corrupting  them 
during  the  recess ;  and  when  the  question  came  up 
again  in  the  following  year,  forty-three  of  the  eighty- 
four  voted  for  the  union. 

It  is  difficult  to  determine  who  were  the  more 
astonished  at  the  result  of  the  test  vote,  the  govern- 
ment or  the  people ;  but  the  joy  of  the  latter  ex- 
ceeded the  dismay  of  the  former.  The  weak  per- 
sonnel of  the  Parliament,  the  unblushing  effrontery 
with  which  bribery  had  been  carried  on  in  and  out 
of  its  halls,  the  pertinacity  with  which  Castlereagh 
was  known  to  continue  his  efforts  in  any  given  direc- 
tion, and  the  vast  power  of  the  British  empire — which 
was  understood  to  be  at  the  service  of  the  corrupters 
— had  naturally  driven  the  masses  of  the  people  into 
the  conviction  that  the  scheme  must  succeed.  Its 
failure  inspired  the  drooping  country  with  wild  en- 
thusiasm, which  vented  itself  in  all  forms  of  popular 
demonstration.  Grattan  was  unquestionably  accu- 
rate when  he  said  "  that  the  whole  unbribed  intellect 
of  Ireland  "  was  opposed  to  the  union.  But  the  gov- 
ernment agents  returned  to  their  work  resolved  to 
accomplish  after  the  recess  what  they  had  not  won 
before  it.  They  first  secured  the  absentees ;  they 
then  elaborated  a  gigantic  fraud  on  the  Catholics  by 
circulating  the  information  that  although,  for  obvious- 
ly politic  reasons,  no  pledge  would  be  publicly  made 
to  the  clergy,  the  imperial  government,  after  the  pas- 


I02         HOW  THE  PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

sage  of  the  act,  would  provide  for  the  payment  of 
the  Catholic  priesthood  on  the  same  terms  as  those 
enjoyed  by  the  clergy  of  the  Established  Church, 
and  a  like  lure  was  cast  about  the  dissenters.  There 
is  not  the  least  doubt  that  Cornwallis  honestly  de- 
sired that  this  assurance  should  be  in  good  faith, 
and  there  is  ample  testimony  that  he  was  authorized 
by  Pitt  and  his  associates  to  make  it.  But  after  the 
union  was  an  accomplished  fact  the  pledge  was 
broken ;  the  king  positively  affirmed  that  he  had 
never  been  spoken  to  on  the  subject,  and  would 
never  have  consented  to  it  had  he  been ;  and,  in 
consequence  of  what  Pitt  affected  to  consider  for  a 
moment  dishonor  at  the  king's  hands,  he  resigned, 
only  to  again  accept  office  soon  afterward. 

It  is  certain  that  Cornwallis  was  adroit  enough  to 
secure  the  support  of  a  very  large  number  of  Cath- 
olics and  the  silence  of  the  rest,  and  that  the  enter- 
prise was  thus  substantial!}^  forwarded.  But  he  did 
not  rely  on  promises  from  those  who  had  no  votes : 
he  continued  to  buy  those  who  had.  A  bill  was  au- 
daciously introduced  by  Castlereagh  providing  what 
he  euphemistically  termed  "  compensation  "  for  those 
who  would  lose  their  seats  by  the  Act  of  Union.  His 
terms  were  generous  enough :  every  aristocrat  who 
returned  members  was  to  receive  in  cash  fifteen  thou- 
sand pounds  for  each  member,  every  member  who 
had  purchased  a  seat  should  have  his  money  re- 
funded from  the  Irish  treasury,  and  every  member 
wlio  was  in  any  manner  a  loser  by  the  union  should 


BOW  THE  PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST,         10$ 

be  amply  repaid.  The  amount  drawn  from  the  people 
of  Ireland  in  taxes  for  this  shameless  proceeding  was 
fixed  by  the  secretary  at  seven  million  five  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  Thus  did  the  English  agent  actually 
make  the  Irish  people  pay  out  of  their  own  pockets 
the  bribes  by  which  their  servants  were  induced  to 
betray  them  to  their  enemies !  A  parallel  for  this 
deed  will  be  sought  in  vain  in  ancient  or  in  modern 
history. 

The  passage  of  the  bill  showed  that  the  govern- 
ment had  actually  secured  a  majority,  although  a 
small  one,  and  the  patriots  became  disheartened.  In 
their  distress  they  appealed  to  the  absent  Grattan  to 
return  to  the  House  and  once  again  lift  up  the  mighty 
voice  which  eighteen  years  before  had  won  the  in- 
dependence of  the  now-degenerate  body.  The  reap- 
pearance of  the  venerable  statesman  on  the  floor  of 
the  House  at  the  most  critical  juncture  which  had 
occurred  since  his  withdrawal  from  politics  furnishes 
an  illustration  of  the  manner  in  which  "history"  is 
made. 

First  we  have  the  intimation  from  Cornwallis  (the 
date  is  January  15,  1800):  "Grattan,  I  hear,  is  to  be 
introduced  after  twelve  to-night,  until  which  period 
the  debate  is  to  be  prolonged.  I  pity  from  my  soul 
Lord  Castlereagh,  but  he  shall  have  something  more 
than  helpless  pity  from  me.  .  .  .  Grattan  has,  you 
know,  the  confidence  of  forty  thousand  pikemen." 
The  next  day  Cornwallis  wrote  to  Portland  that 
Grattan  took  his  seat  at  seven  in  the  morning,  having 
7 


I06        JIOW  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST. 

been  elected  for  Wicklow  at  midnight :  "  He  ap- 
peared weak  in  health,  but  had  sufficient  strength 
to  deliver  a  very  inflammatory  speech  of  an  hour 
and  a  half  sitting."  The  biographer  of  the  lord- 
lieutenant  thus  describes  the  scene :  "  The  election 
had  been  timed  by  Mr.  Grattan's  friends  so  as  to 
prevent  his  taking  his  seat  until  the  unusual  hour 
mentioned  above,  when  he  was  supported  in  to  the 
House  apparently  in  a  fainting  state.  .  .  .  The  scene 
was  well  gotten  up,  but  the  trick  was  too  palpable 
and  produced  little  effect."  The  truth  was  that  Corn- 
wallis  and  Castlereagh,  profoundly  dreading  the  in- 
fluence of  Grattari,  had  resorted  to  all  possible  de- 
vices to  prevent  his  election,  and  the  writ  was  with- 
held until  the  last  moment  the  law  allowed ;  it  was 
only  by  waking  up  the  proper  officer  after  midnight 
that  the  return  was  gotten  to  Parliament  at  seven  in 
the  morning.  The  allegation  that  Grattan's  entrance 
at  that  time  was  a  bit  of  theatricalism  invented  by 
him  or  by  his  friends  is  therefore  a  mere  falsehood. 
Instead  of  appearing  a  "  palpable  trick,"  his  arrival 
is  pronounced  by  Barrington,  who  was  present, 
"  electric."  Grattan,  he  says,  was  reduced  almost 
to  the  appearance  of  a  spectre.  "  As  he  feebly  tot- 
tered into  the  House  to  his  seat  every  member  simul- 
taneously rose  from  his  seat."  Would  they,  corrupt 
and  incorrupt,  have  so  risen  in  homage  to  a  "pal- 
pable trick  "  ?  "  He  moved  slowly  to  the  table ;  his 
languid  countenance  seemed  to  revive  as  he  took 
those    oaths   that   restored   him   to    his    pre-eminent 


HO IV   THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.         lO/ 

station;  the  smile  of  inward  satisfaction  obviously 
illuminated  his  features,  and  reanimation  and  energy 
seemed  to  kindle  by  the  labor  of  his  mind."  Almost 
breathless,  amid  the  deep  silence  Grattan  attempted 
to  rise,  but  could  not  keep  his  feet.  He  was  given 
permission  to  remain  in  his  chair.  "Then,"  says 
Lecky,  'Svas  witnessed  that  spectacle — among  the 
grandest  in  the  whole  range  of  mental  phenomena — 
of  mind  asserting  its  supremacy  over  matter.  .  .  .  As 
the  fire  of  oratory  kindled,  as  the  angel  of  enthusiasm 
touched  those  pallid  lips  with  the  living  coal,  as  the 
old  scenes  crowded  on  the  speaker's  mind  and  the 
old  plaudits  broke  upon  his  ear,  it  seemed  as  though 
the  force  of  disease  was  neutralized  and  the  buoyancy 
of  youth  restored.  His  voice  gained  a  deeper  power, 
his  action  a  more  commanding  energy,  his  eloquence 
an  ever-increasing  brilliancy.  For  more  than  two 
hours  he  poured  forth  a  stream  of  epigram,  of  ar- 
gument, of  appeal.  He  traversed  almost  the  whole 
of  that  complex  question;  he  grappled  with  the 
various  arguments  of  expediency  the  ministers  had 
urged ;  but  he  placed  the  issue  on  the  highest 
grounds:  *The  thing  he  proposes  to  buy  is  what 
cannot  be  sold — liberty.'  "  "  Never,"  adds  Barring- 
ton,  "  did  a  speech  make  a  more  affecting  impres- 
sion; but  it  came  too  late." 

It  was  too  late.  Bribery  had  accomplished  its 
undertaking ;  and,  lest  the  people  should  rise  up  on 
the  purchased  traitors  and  rend  them,  Cornwallis 
had  prudently  increased  the  military  in  the  country 


I08         HOW  THE   PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST 

to  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  men.  So  con- 
vinced was  he  that  the  people  might  attempt  to  save 
by  force  what  they  had  lost  by  fraud  that  in  extremity 
he  resolved  to  accept  even  Russian  and  Dutch  sol- 
diers if  no  others  could  be  had.  On  the  test  vote, 
February  6,  i8oo,  the  government  had  a  majority 
of  forty-three;  and  thus  the  Parliament  of  Ireland 
was  doomed,  while  the  tramp  of  soldiery  resounded 
through  the  streets  of  Dublin  to  warn  the  indignant 
that  their  cause  was  lost  and  to  admonish  the  reck- 
less that  their  courage  would  not  avail.  It  was  thus 
that  Cornwallis  consolidated  the  British  empire. 

*'  In  the  case  of  Ireland,"  writes  the  historian  of 
Rationalism,  "as  truly  as  in  the  case  of  Poland,  a  na- 
tional constitution  was  destroyed  by  a  foreign  power 
contrary  to  the  wishes  of  the  people.  In  the  one 
case  the  deed  was  a  crime  of  violence ;  in  the  other 
it  was  a  crime  of  treachery  and  corruption.  In 
both  cases  a  legacy  of  enduring  bitterness  was  the 
result." 

The  remaining  letters  of  Cornwallis  touching  on 
Irish  affairs  are  appeals  to  the  British  ministers  to 
fulfil  his  promises  made  to  the  traitors,  to  pay  the 
price  for  which  they  had  sold  the  constitutional  lib- 
erty of  their  country ;  and  scattered  at  intervals  be- 
tween his  dignified  and  often  piteous  entreaties  are 
coarse  demands  from  his  subalterns  for  money  to  re- 
imburse themselves  or  to  deliv^er  to  the  commoner 
creatures  who  preferred  cash.  Reviewing  the  obsti- 
nate refusal  of  the  king  to  consent  to  religious  equal- 


now  THE  PARLIAMENT  WAS  LOST.         IO9 

ity  in  Ireland,  which  he  had  promised,  and  the  unfaith- 
fulness of  the  ministers  in  dishonoring  his  pledges, 
he  writes :  "  Ireland  is  again  to  become  a  millstone 
about  the  neck  of  Britain,  and  to  be  plunged  into  all 
its  former  horrors  and  miseries."  - 
7 


CHATTKR    V. 

A    LETTERED    NATION  REDUCED    BY  FORCE 
AND  LAW  TO  ILLITERACY. 


T' 


^HE  Irish  immigrants  in  the  United  States  are 
i-  taunted  by  thoughtless  Americans  with  the 
crime  or  the  misfortune  of  ignorance.  Why  is  Ire- 
land ignorant?  Was  she  an  unlettered  country 
when  invaded  by  England  ?  and  Jias  she  been  con- 
stantly resisting  the  efforts  of  the  English  govern- 
ment to  educate  her? 

The  authentic  history  of  Ireland  begins,  by  the 
com:-.  .  consent  of  historians,  in  the  fifth  century.* 
There  is  no  dispute  about  the  character,  the  mission 
or  the  principal  acts  of  St.  Patrick.  It  is  conceded 
that  before  the  close  of  that  century  a  bishop's  see 

^  "  WHiether  the  Irish  had  an  alphabet  or  a  literature  of  their  own 
before  the  arrival  of  St.  Patrick,  in  the  fifth  century,  was  for  a  long 
time  a  contested  question.  It  is  now,  however,  generally  admitted 
that  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  they  had  both.  Dr.  Todd,  a 
writer  exceedingly  cautious  in  making  any  assertions  or  advancing 
any  opinions  without  being  prepared  to  corroborate  them  by  sufficient 
proof,  has  endorsed  this  view  in  veiy  explicit  terms.  .  .  .  Dr.  Todd 
also  states  that  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  .  .  .  this  ancient 
alphabet  was  superseded  by  the  present  Roman  characters,  introduced 
by  (the  saint)." — Dublin  Reziew  (1871) ;  article,  "  The  Brehon  Law 
of  Ireland." 
110 


A   NA  TION  MADE  ILLITERA  TE.  Ill 

existed  at  Clogher,  that  Armagh  was  the  seat  of  a 
metropolitan,  and  that  pubhc  schools  and  seminaries 
flourished.  Irish  learning  and  civilization  have  here 
their  authentic  beginning.  The  cathedral-school  at 
Armagh  rose  rapidly  in  importance,  and  became  the 
first  university  of  Ireland.  The  number  of  students, 
both  native  and  foreign,  so  increased  that  the  univer- 
sity, as  we  may  justly  call  it,  was  divided  into  three 
parts,  one  of  which  was  devoted  entirely  to  students 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  We  need  not  stop  to  de- 
termine how  many  other  establishments  similar  to 
those  of  Armagh  were  really  founded  in  the  lifetime 
of  St.  Patrick.  The  rapid  extension  of  the  monastic 
institute  in  Ireland,  and  the  extraordinary  ardor 
with  which  the  Irish  cenobites  applied  themselves  to 
the  cultivation  of  letters,  remain  undisputed  facts. 

"  Within  a  century  after  the  death  of  St.  Patrick," 
says  Bishop  Nicholson,  "  the  Irish  seminaries  had  so 
increased  that  most  parts  of  Europe  sent  their  chil- 
dren to  be  educated  here,  and  drew  thence  their 
bishops  and  teachers."^  In  the  eighth  century  grants 
were  made  by  the  kings  for  the  extension  of  educa- 
tion; in  the  ninth  there  were  seven  thousand  stu- 
dents at  the  university  of  Armagh,  "  and  the  schools 
of  Cashel,  Dindaleathglass  and  Lismore  vied  with  it 
m  renown."^ 

^  Chj'istian  Schools  and  Scholai'Sy  pp.  62,  63.  Mosheim's  Eccle- 
siastical History,  p.  279 :  "  Irishmen  .  .  .  cultivated  and  amassed 
learning  beyond  the  other  nations  of  Europe  in  those  dark  times." 

'  Christian  Schools  and  Scholars,  vol,  i.,  p.  63. 


112  A   NA  TION  MADE  ILLITERA  TE. 

Montalembert  says  that  Ireland  was  one  of  the 
principal  centres  of  Christianity  from  the  fifth  to  the 
eighth  century,^  "  and  not  only  of  Christian  holiness 
and  virtue,  but  also  of  knowledge,  literature  and  that 
intellectual  civilization  with  which  the  new  faith  was 
about  to  endow  Europe,  then  delivered  from  heathen- 
ism and  the  Roman  empire."^  "While  the  Gothic 
tempest^  was  trampling  down  the  classic  civilization, 
Ireland  providentially  became  the  nursery  of  saints 
and  the  refuge  of  science.  Her  two  most  ardent  pas- 
sions then  were  to  learn  and  to  teach.  In  Iceland, 
the  Orkneys,  Scotland,  Britain,  Gaul,  Germany,  even 
in  Italy,  her  missionaries  were  everywhere  transplant- 
ing in  the  loosened  soil  the  pagan  tree  of  knowledge 
and  the  Christian  tree  of  life.  As  the  Goths  con- 
quered Rome,  the  Celts  conquered  the  Goths." 
"  There  were  also  trained  an  entire  population  [in  a 
monastic  city]  of  philosophers,  of  writers,  of  archi- 
tects, of  carvers,  of  painters,  of  calligraphers,  of  mu- 
sicians, poets  and  historians,  but,  above  all,  of  mis- 
sionaries and  preachers  destined  to  spread  the  light 
of  the  gospel  and  of  Christian  education  not  only  in 
all  the  Celtic  countries  of  which  Ireland  was  the 
nursing-mother,  but  throughout  Europe,  among  all 
the  Teutonic  races,  among  the  Franks  and  Burgun- 

1  "  From  the  sixth  centuiy  the  fame  of  the  Irish  schools  stood  high 
in  Europe." — Dublin  Review  (vol.  xvi.,  1871},  "The  Brehon  Law 
of  Ireland." 

'  Monks  0f  the  West,  vol.  iii.,  p.  84. 

'  Attempts  to  Establish  the  Protestant  Refonnation  in  Ireland^ 
Thomas  D'Arcy  McGee,  p.  22. 


A   NA  TION  MADE   ILLITERA  TE.  1 1 3 

dians,  who  were  already  masters  of  Gaul,  as  well 
as  amid  the  dwellers  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube, 
and  up  to  the  frontiers  of  Italy."  "  This  preponder- 
ance of  the  monastic  element  in  the  Irish  Church 
.  .  .  maintained  itself  not  only  during  all  the  flourish- 
ing period  of  the  Church's  history,  but  even  as  long 
as  the  nation  continued  independent;"^  and  the 
Church  preserved  learning  until  learning  and  the 
Church  and  independence  passed  away  together.^ 
"  They  survived  internal  feuds  and  the  fierce  inroads 
of  the  Danes ;  the  schools  flourished  even  in  the 
presence  of  famine,  and  one  of  the  general  rules  was 
that  students  who  came  from  abroad  should  be  fed 
and  lodged  free.  From  Ireland  as  from  a  fountain- 
head  contemporaneous  nations  *  drew  those  streams 
of  learning  which  afterward  so  copiously  overspread 
the  Western  world.  ...  It  was  thence  that  many 
foreign  churches  received  their  greatest  ornaments. 
It  was  there  our  own  Alfred  received  his  education  ;^ 
and  at  what  time  soever  the  Irish  gained  the  know- 
ledge of  letters,  that  period  must  have  been  an  early 
one,  and  is  justly  set  down  as  such  by  the  writers  of 
that  country.' " 

Over  to  the  court  of  Charlemagne  went  Clement 

1  Monks  of  the  West,  vol.  iii.,  p.  87.  '  Ibid.,  p.  53. 

*  "  In  the  latter  end  of  the  seventh  century,  Alfred,  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  prince,  son  of  Oswy,  king  of  Northumbria,  and  who  was 
himself  afterward  king  of  Northumbria,  having  been  exiled  from 
England,  retired  to  Ireland,  where  he  studied  for  many  years  in  its 
seminaries." — Annals  of  the  Fottr  Masters,  p.  441,  note.  "Alfred 
the  Great  also  received  his  education  there." — Ibid.,  p.  loi,  note. 


114  A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE, 

and  Dungal;^  in  the  court  of  Charles  the  Bald,  John 
Scotus  Erigena^  taught  science  and  philosophy;  the 
life  of  the  great  saint  of  lona,  written  by  Adamnan 
in  the  seventh  century,  was  carried  to  the  principal 
churches  of  the  Continent  by  many  a  saint  and 
scholar  who  had  seen  the  Book  of  Kells;^  and  the 
monks  of  St.  Gall  sang  the  psalms  to  music  which 
they  had  learned  from  Irish  choir-masters.  The 
seed  that  Columba  had  planted  in  Scotland  had 
ripened  into  many  harvests,  and  Ireland  supplied 
teachers  to  the  Hebrides  as  well  as  to  the  Conti- 
nent,^ and  on^  the  rocks  of  lona  as  well  as  on  the 

1  "  Tiraboschi  quotes  an  edict  of  the  emperor  Lothaire,  published 
in  823,  for  the  re-establishment  of  public  schools  in  nine  of  the  chief 
cities  of  Italy,  from  which  it  appears  that  Dungal  was  at  the  time 
still  presiding  over  the  school  of  Pavia.  He  seems  to  be  the  same 
who  in  811  addressed  along  letter  to  Charlemagne  on  the  subject 
of  two  solar  eclipses  which  were  expected  to  take  place  in  the  fol- 
lowing year,  and  may  be  yet  further  identified  with  the  *  Dtingalus 
Scotorum  prsecipuus '  who  is  noticed  in  the  catalogue  of  the  library 
of  Bobbio,  where  he  at  last  retired,  bringing  with  him  a  great  store 
of  books  which  he  presented  to  the  monastery.  Among  them  were 
four  books  of  Virgil,  two  of  Ovid,  one  of  Lucretius,  and  a  consider- 
able number  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  fathers," — Christian  Schools 
and  Scholars,  vol.  i.,  p.   196. 

2  Hallam  says,  "  But  two  extraordinary  men,  Scotus  Erigena  and 
Gerbert,  stand  out  from  the  crowd  in  literature  and  philosophy." — 
Literature  of  Europe,  vol.  i.,  p.  32. 

Interesting  notes  on  this  subject  will  be  found  in  Very  Rev.  Bede 
Vaughan's  Life  of  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin. 

3  Written  by  St.  Columba  in  the  sixth  century,  and  deposited  in 
the  church  of  Kells.     It  is  now  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 

*  "  We  again  repeat  what  it  required  all  the  learning  of  Usher. 
White,  Colgan  and  Ward  to  prove — namely,  that  the  holy  and  learn- 


A    NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE.  II5 

Scottish  Highlands  h'ngered  for  ages  the  hymns  of 
the  disciples  of  Columbkille.  Wherever  an  Irish 
college  was  founded,  on  whatever  soil  it  flourished, 
religion  and  learning  were  hand  in  hand,  and  to  the 
labors  of  the  student  were  joined  those  of  the  scribe 
and  the  artisan.  Europe  was  enriched  by  man- 
uscripts made  by  Irish  hands,  '*  and  the  researches 
of  modern  bibliopolists  are  continually  disinterring 
from   German   or  Italian   libraries  a  Horace  or   an 

ed  Scotia  of  the  ancients  was  Ireland.  The  name  of  Scotia  became 
the  exclusive  possession  of  the  Scotch — that  is  to  say,  of  the  Irish 
colonists  in  Caledonia — only  in  the  eleventh  or  twelfth  century,  in 
the  time  of  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  at  the  moment  when  the  power  of 
the  true  Scots  declined  in  Scotland  under  the  influence  of  the  Anglo- 
Norman  conquest." — Montalembert,  Monks  of  the  West,  vol.  iii.,  p. 
162,  note. 

"  Joannes  Duns  Scotus,  a  native  of  Down,  and  hence  surnamed 
Dunnensis,  signifying  '  of  Donn,'  was  born  near  Downpatrick  in  the 
latter  end  of  the  thirteenth  century.  .  .  .  Being  educated  for  some 
time  in  the  schools  of  Ireland,  he  went  to  England  and  entered 
Merton  College  in  Oxford ;  he  became  a  Franciscan  friar,  and  was 
a  lecturer  at  Oxford  and  afterward  at  Paris  on  theology,  philosophy, 
etc.,  and  from  his  great  abilities  and  acuteness  of  intellect  he  was 
denominated  The  Subtle  Doctor.  In  theology,  metaphysics  and 
philosophy  he  was  scarcely  equalled  by  any  man  in  Europe,  and  his 
great  rival  as  a  theologian,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  divided  the  literary 
and  religious  world  into  two  great  sects,  the  followers  of  the  one 
being  denominated  Thomists,  and  of  the  other  Scotists.  .  .  .  And  it 
may  also  be  observed  that  Joannes  Scotus  Erigena,  an  Irishman  and 
one  of  the  most  learned  and  celebrated  men  in  Europe  in  the  ninth 
century,  and  Marianus  Scotus,  as  well  as  Duns  Scotus,  have  been  all 
absolutely  claimed  by  .  .  .  Scotch  writers  as  natives  of  Scotland,  for 
which  they  had  no  grounds  but  the  surname  Scotus ;  but  the  Irish 
in  ancient  times  .  .  .  were  called  Scotii  or  Scots,  and  Ireland  was 
named  Scotia." — Annals  of  the  Four  Masters,  p.  583,  note. 


Il6  A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE. 

Ovid  or  a  sacred  codex  whose  Irish  gloss  betrays 
the  hand  which  traced  its  dehcate  letters."  ^ 

Music,  poetry  and  art  were  assiduously  cultivated 
in  Ireland  until  the  Danish  invaders,  by  the  sacking 
of  Armagh,  the  destruction  of  nearly  every  mon- 
ument of  art  which  fell  in  their  way  and  the  prohi- 
bition by  them  of  letters,  broke  up  the  schools  in 
the  portions  of  the  island  they  overran ;  but^with 
the  victorious  ascendency  of  Brian  Boru^  the  schools 
were  rebuilt  and  the  arts  again  resumed  their  sway. 
So  profoundly  peaceful  did  Brian's  kingdom  become 
after  his  chastisement  of  the  Danes  that  the  poets, 
to  illustrate  the  tranquillity,  good  order  and  chivalry 
of  the  time,  devised  the  legend  of  a  beautiful  lady 
"  in  the  richest  attire,  and  with  a  quantity  of  gold 
and  jewels  about  her,  travelling  over  the  kingdom 
without  damage  either  to  her  honor  or  to  her  prop- 
erty." ^  Wherever  the  Irish  bards  went  they  carried 
their  love  for  the  national  instrument,  the  harp,  and 
their  poetry  was    rhymed.^      The  historians   of  art 

1  Christian  Schools  and  Scholars,  vol.  i.,  p.  75. 

2  "  Besides  repairing  the  schools  burned  by  the  Danes,  and  every- 
where giving  orders  for  students  to  be  sought  out  to  fill  them  with, 
he  likewise  erected  many  new  seminaries  of  education  for  the  in- 
crease of  science  and  useful  knowledge  in  his  country." — Win?tey 
vol.  i.,  p.   163. 

A  chronological  poem  on  the  Christian  kings  of  Ireland,  written 
by  the  abbot  Giolla  Moduda  in  the  twelfth  century,  is  among  the 
preserved  Irish  manuscripts. 

3  The  origin  of  Moore's  "  Rich  and  rare  were  the  gems  she  wore." 
*  "  Rhyme,  if  not  invented  in  Ireland,  was  at  least  adopted  by  hei 

versifiers  so  generally  and  at  so  early  a  period  as  sometimes  to  be 


A    NATION  MADE   ILLITERATE.  11/ 

declare  that  the  Irish  introduced  Celtic  art,  which 
was  a  formidable  competitor  against  that  of  Byzan- 
tium, and  Irish  illuminations  furnished  the  schools 
of  Europe  with  models. 

Was  this  civilization  all  gone  when  Strongbo\^ 
landed?^  Absurd  supposition!  "Whatever  exag- 
geration may  have  been  committed  by  the  national 
annalists  when  they  speak  of  the  foreign  students 
who  resorted  to  the  Irish  schools,^  it  is  impossible 
to  doubt  that  they  were  eagerly  sought  by  natives 
of  the  most  distant  lands,  who,  in  an  age  when  the 
rest  of  Europe  was  sunk  in  illiterate  barbarism, 
found  in  the  cloisters  of  Armagh,  Lismore,  Clonard 
and  Clonmacnois  masters  of  philosophy  and  science 
whose  learning  had  passed  into  a  proverb.  Camden 
remarks  how  common  a  thing  it  is  to  read  in  the 
Lives  of  our  English  saints  that  they  were  sent  to 

designated  *  the  art  of  the  Irish.'  " — Christian  Schools  and  Scholars^ 
vol.  i.,  p.  76. 

1  "  But,  as  the  ravages  of  the  Danes  seldom  penetrated  farther 
than  the  seacoast,  many  copies  [of  the  Brehon  Laws]  were  still  pre- 
served, especially  such  as  were  in  the  custody  of  the  Brehons  them- 
selves. That  office  was  hereditaiy  in  certain  families,  and  with  the 
office  were  transmitted  from  father  to  son  the  manuscript  copies  of 
the  laws.  .  .  .  One  of  the  fragments  in  the  Trinity  College  man- 
uscripts (H.  3,  18)  is  undoubtedly  upward  of  five  hundred  years 
o\6."— Dublin  Review  (1871);  article,  "  The  Brehon  Law  of  Ire- 
land," p.  399,  Mr.  Gladstone  in  his  Mansion-House  speech,  during 
his  recent  visit  to  Ireland,  had  the  candor  properly  to  acknowledge 
the  debt  of  Europe, to  the  Irish  schools. 

'  The  Irish  professors  went  over  to  Oxford  to  teach  after  the 
invasion. 


Il8  A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE. 

study  in  Ireland,  and  the  same  expression  occurs 
quite  as  frequently  in  the  Gallican  histories.  Even 
in  the  eleventh  century,  Solgenus,  bishop  of  St.  Da- 
vid's, spent  ten  years  studying  in  the  Irish  schools, 
zvhich  zvere  tJien  as  famous  as  every  ^  As  the  early 
architecture  of  their  native  island  is  of  itself  an  im- 
perishable monument  of  the  civilization  which  con- 
fronted the  Saxon  invader  only  to  be  overthrown  by 
him,  so  the  churches  and  monasteries  of  mediaeval 
Europe,  the  seminaries  and  the  universities  refute 
the  false  assertion,  industriously  propagated  and  so 
commonly  believed  in  our  own  day,  that  letters  and 
civilization  were  carried  over  the  Channel  "  on  the 
long  lances  and  mailed  steeds"^  of  the  soldiers  of 
Henry  11.^  For  two  hundred  years  after  the  in- 
vasion the  history  of  Ireland  is  the  story  of  battles, 
pursuits  and  retreats,  of  which  the  sanguinary  de- 
tails contain  the  names  of  the  monasteries  assaulted 
and  robbed — and  every  monastery  was  a  seminary — 
of  churches  pillaged;  and  nearly  every  church  was 
the  centre  of  a  group  of  schools.  The  Annals  of 
the  Four  Masters  are  studded  during  the  twelfth, 
thirteenth,  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  with  a 
brilliant  chronology  of  doctors,  poets  and  philos- 
ophers, as  with   saints   and  martyrs,  whose  works, 

*  Christian  Schools  and  Scholars,  vol.  i.,  p.  79, 

*  Abb6  Perraud,  p.  iii. 

3  Ilallam  {Literature  of  Europe)  grudgingly  admits  that  "  as  early 
as  the  sixth  century"  there  was  learning  in  the  Irish  monasteries, 
and  that  Ireland  "  both  drew  students  from  the  Continent  and  sent 
forth  men  of  comparative  eminence  into  its  schools  and  churches." 


A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE,  1 19 

being  in  their  native  tongue,  are  now  popularly 
unknown.  Instead  of  the  Saxon  invaders  carrying 
letters  and  civilization  to  Ireland,  they  went  to  de- 
stroy both.^ 

Mr.  George  Sigerson,  the  distinguished  essayist, 
says  in  his  interesting  Modern  Ireland:'^  "  Those  who 
delight  in  expatiating  on  the  irreconcilable  race-antip- 
athies supposed  to  exist  between  the  Anglo-Saxon 
and  the  Celt  in  these  islands  appear  incapable  of 
imagining  a  time  when  such  feelings  were  unknown." 
But  that  time  was  prior  to  the  invasion  of  Ireland  for 
conquest  and  land-confiscation.  "  And  yet  it  happens 
that  when  the  people  of  England  and  Ireland  were 

^  "  With  this  antique  guide  in  our  hands  [Senchus  Mor,  or  Code 
of  Brehon  Laws)  we  cros?  the  borders  of  the  English  Pale,  with  its 
belt  of  watch-towers  garrisoned  by  wardens,  who  day  and  night 
scrutinize  the  woods  spread  before  them,  ready  to  flash  a  warning 
of  the  approach  of  the  Irish  enemy.  Into  the  woods  we  enter  as  it 
were,  and  pass  from  them  into  the  clearings  where  the  dwellings  of 
the  chiefs  are  placed.  And  as  we  journey  along,  in  place  of  the 
savage  neglect  we  expected  to  find  we  observe  a  certain  order  and 
regularity.  The  roads  and  pathways  are  kept  clean  and  free  from 
brambles  and  brushwood,  the  streams  are  spanned  with  rustic  bridges, 
and  here  and  there  the  sound  of  a  mill  is  heard.  The  land,  too,  is 
tilled,  and  where  the  countless  cattle  are  browsing  we  hear  the  sound 
of  bells  tinkling  from  the  necks  of  the  foremost  leaders  of  the  herds 
and  observe  that  the  fields  are  irrigated.  ,  .  .  Now,  this  is  no  ideal 
sketch.  There  is  not  a  single  feature  of  the  landscape  we  have  thus 
brought  before  us  for  which  law  and  authority  cannot  be  quoted 
from  the  Senchus  Mor.  .  .  .  And  the  orchard  and  its  beehives  are 
all  mentioned  in  its  pages.  Not  only  so,  but  distinct  provisions  are 
laid  down  for  their  protection  and  recovery  of  their  estimated  value.'' 
— Dublin  Review  (1871);  article,  "The  Brehon  Law  of  Ireland." 

2  London  :  Longmans. 


I20  A    NATION  MADE    ILLITERATE. 

more  purely  composed  of  these  races  than  they  are 
at  present,  no  such  antipathy  was  exhibited.  This 
fact  is  apparent  on  a  first  glance  at  the  relations 
which  existed  between  these  two  nations  in  the 
matter  of  education.  Venerable  Bede  says  it  was 
customary  among  ,the  English,  from  the  highest  to 
the  lowest,  to  retire  to  Ireland  for  study  and  devo- 
tion, and  further  adds  that  they  were  all  hospitably 
received  and  supplied  gratuitously  with  food,  books 
and  instruction."  How  marvellous  the  after-return  ! 
They  whom  the  Irish  freely  lodged,  fed  and  taught 
robbed  the  Irish  of  house,  land  and  education  !  "  Ad- 
helm,  his  contemporary,  in  a  passage  in  which  he 
shows  his  desire  to  exalt  some  of  his  own  country- 
men, corroborates  this  statement.  Why  should  Ire- 
land, he  asks,  whither  troops  of  students  are  daily 
transported,  boast  of  such  unspeakable  excellence, 
as  if,  in  the  rich  soil  of  England,  Greek  and  Roman 
masters  were  not  to  be  found  to  unlock  the  treasures 
of  divine  knowledge?  'Though  Ireland,  rich  and 
blooming  in  scholars,  is  adorned,  like  the  poles  of 
the  world,  with  innumerable  bright  stars,  Britain  has 
her  radiant  sun,  her  great  pontiff  Theodore.'  Yet 
Adhelm  himself  admits  that  he  received  the  greater 
part  of  his  education  at  the  hands  of  the  Irish  founder 
of  that  monastery  of  Malmsbury  of  which  he  was 
abbot.  Camden  also  affirms  that  the  migration  of 
Anglo-Saxon  students  to  Irish  schools  was  the  rule. 
'  Our  Anglo-Saxons,'  he  says,  *  flocked  in  early  times 
to  Ireland  as  if  to  purchase  goods.     Hence  it  is  fre- 


A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE.  1 23 

quently  read  in  our  historians  on  holy  men,  "  He  has 
been  sent  to  Ireland  to  school."  *  It  cannot  be  doubt- 
ed that  the  prosperity  of  the  Irish  schools  of  learn- 
ing was  great,  and  that  it  was  chiefly  due  to  the  high 
value  set  upon  learning  by  the  Irish  people  generally 
— an  idea  they  have  cherished  under  the  most  ad- 
verse circumstances  of  later  times.  .  .  .  The  system 
of  education  which  preceded  the  more  modern  uni- 
versity system  in  Ireland  took  in  the  study  of  law, 
history,  philosophy  in  a  restricted  sense,  poetry, 
music  and  languages.  .  .  .  The  successive  waves 
of  invasion  which  burst  upon  the  Irish  shore  laid 
waste  all  the  land  they  touched.  Men  could  not  be 
expected  to  devote  themselves  to  questions  of  ab- 
stract importance,  when  they  were  annually  called 
upon  to  defend  their  lives  or  protect  their  property 
from  fierce  irruptions.  The  Danish  marauders,  as 
they  plundered  and  burned  church,  monastery  and 
the  habitations  of  chief  and  noble,  appear  to  have 
taken  a  perverse  pleasure  in  destroying  every  man- 
uscript on  which  they  could  lay  hands.  And  when 
the  Danes  had  been  conquered,  the  Anglo-Norman 
invasion  came  to  engage  the  inhabitants  once  more 
in  a  protracted  struggle  for  life,  land  and  native  in- 
stitutions. Thus  Ireland  lost  her  prominent  posi- 
tion in  the  ranks  of  learning  at  a  time  when  it  was 
most  important  for  her  future  to  retain  and  develop 
it." 

But  learning  and  taste  survived  even  the  success- 
ful invasion.     The  small  part  of  the  island  which  the 


124  A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE. 

seekers  for  rich  land  succeeded  in  reducing  by  arms 
did  not  contain  all  the  scholars  or  all  the  schools  of 
Ireland.  It  remained  for  the  makers  of  penal  laws 
to  crush  all  learning  out  of  the  country,  and  an  ex- 
amination of  the  articles  against  education  in  that 
code  will  not  only  at  once  disclose  the  cruel  and 
bitter  methods  employed  to  reduce  a  lettered  nation 
to  illiteracy,  but  will  also  make  apparent  how  com- 
plete the  destruction  of  education  then  became,  and 
how  sturdily  even  the  poorest  of  the  native  popula- 
tion struggled  for  the  smallest  fragments  of  a  once- 
glorious  heritage.  As  the  penal  laws  were  directed 
against  the  Catholics  of  Ireland,  it  was  judicious  to 
take  from  a  Protestant  a  description  of  their  effects. 
It  is  needless  to  remind  the  reader  that  almost  the 
whole  Irish  population  was  Catholic,  as  it  yet  is. 

Says  Sigerson :  "  Over  the  heads  of  the  bard,  the 
schoolmaster  and  the  priest  hung  the  sharp  sword 
of  the  penal  laws.  Religion  forbade  its  ministers  to 
abandon  the  land  to  its  fate,  and  the  old  thirst  for 
learning  produced  schoolmasters  who  might  impart, 
against  the  law,  some  classical  knowledge  to  those 
who  desired  to  fill  up  the  broken  ranks  of  the  minis- 
try. Thus  there  were  schools  held  in  caves  "  (it  was 
a  crime  for  a  Catholic  to  teach  or  to  learn,  as  will  be 
seen  by  a  perusal  of  Lecky's  summary  of  the  penal 
laws,  given  in  another  chapter),  "  in  mountain-glens, 
behind  hedges — whence  the  name  *  hedge-school ' — 
where  forbidden  knowledge  was  imparted  by  an  out- 
law master  to  illegal  pupils,  with  a  youthful  sentry 


A   NATION  MADE   IL  LITE  RATE.  1 25 

posted  on  some  neighboring  eminence  to  give  warn- 
ing of  the  approach  of  the  officers  of  the  law."  Thus 
did  England  endeavor  to  educate  Ireland !  "  But  if 
it  was  penal  to  look  for  education  at  home,  it  was 
doubly  penal  to  seek  for  it  abroad,  even  in  those  col- 
leges which  Irish  officers  serving  in  France  and  Spain 
had  built  out  of  their  pay,  and  which  they  endowed  with 
certain  burses  that  might  be  obtained  and  held  by  any 
of  their  kinsfolk  or  of  their  native  country."  In  the 
history  of  what  other  people  will  be  found  a  parallel 
for  this  ?  These  soldiers  were  brave  men  who  had 
been  defeated  in  the  field  by  superior  English  force, 
and  who,  rather  than  suffer  the  degradation  which  the 
conquerors  inflicted,  preferred  exile  and  foreign  mil- 
itary service.  Realizing  the  depth  of  ignorance  into 
which  the  penal  laws  against  education  in  Ireland 
would  consign  the  masses  of  their  wretched  country- 
men, they  devoted  to  the  foundation  of  these  free 
colleges  for  Irish  students  the  compensation  allowed 
them  in  the  armies  in  which  they  enlisted.  But  the 
English  penal  laws  pursued  them  even  into  exile.  It 
was  a  criminal  offence  for  a  Catholic  father  to  send 
his  child  out  of  Ireland  to  school,  and  there  were  no 
schools  left  for  him  in  Ireland.  A  few  Catholic  fam- 
ilies who,  for  some  exceptional  reason,  had  money 
enough  to  allow  the  son  the  advantages  to  be  obtained 
in  these  foreign  colleges,  and  who  were  able  to  risk 
the  consequences  of  defying  the  law,  sent  their  sons 
abroad ;  and  down  to  O'Connell's  days  it  was  still  the 
practice :  he  studied  at  Douay. 
8 


126  A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE. 

There  is  to-day  one  institution  of  learning  in  Ire- 
land, Trinity  College,  Dublin.  It  is  a  Protestant  in- 
stitution, and  up  to  recent  times  Catholics  were  not 
admitted  into  it  It  has  a  curious  history.  Says 
Sigerson  :  "  The  monastery  of  All-Hallows  was  dis- 
solved— it  enclosed  a  Catholic  seminary — and  its 
confiscated  grounds  given  in  1 591  to  be  the  site  of 
a  Protestant  educational  institute  known  as  Trinity 
College."  That  was  nearly  three  hundred  years  ago. 
Then  all  education  was  absolutely  prohibited  to  the 
people  of  Ireland — absolutely,  because  only  Protest- 
ants could  go  to  school,  and  there  were  scarcely 
any  Protestants  in  the  country.  How  long  did  the 
laws  then  enacted  remain  in  force  ?  When  did  Eng- 
land give  the  masses  of  the  Irish  people  the  privilege 
of  going  to  school  again  ?     Fifty  years  ago  ! 

Can  Americans  now  understand  why  the  Irish  im- 
migrant is  illiterate  ?  It  will  not  be  fair  to  say  that 
if  the  privilege  of  learning  has  existed  for  fifty  years, 
this  generation  of  Irish  should  be  educated.  Some- 
thing more  is  required  to  make  a  people  educated 
than  the  leave  to  go  to  school.  Schools  are  neces- 
sary :  we  shall  shortly  see  how  they  were  provided. 
Schools  are  not  enough,  however  numerous :  the 
parent  must  be  so  situated  that  he  can  spare  the 
time  of  the  child,  buy  it  books  and  clothe  it  present- 
ably.  The  landlords  of  Ireland  extorted  such  enor- 
mous rent  from  the  tenantry — who  are,  broadly 
speaking,  all  the  people  of  Ireland — that  the  labor 
of  the  children  was  needed  on  the  farms ;  and  if  that 


A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE.  1 27 

were  not  needed,  the  parents  were  usually  without 
the  means  with  which  to  equip  them  for  the  school- 
room. Will  any  but  the  thoughtless  taunt  the  Irish 
immigrant  with  his  want  of  education,  with  his 
poverty  ? 

While  it  is  true  that  the  penal  laws  by  which  the 
Irish  people  were  robbed  of  their  schools  and  com- 
pelled to  become  illiterate  were  ostensibly  direct- 
ed against  the  Catholic  religion,  it  is  equally  true 
that  the  Catholic  sovereigns  of  England  were  as 
vicious  toward  their  Irish  subjects  as  were  the  Prot- 
estant monarchs  in  whose  reigns  the  penal  laws  were 
passed.  It  was  essential  that  the  masses  of  the  peo- 
ple should  be  kept  ignorant  in  order  to  complete  the 
confiscation  of  their  land,  to  establish  absentee  pro- 
prietary, and  to  prevent  the  rise  in  Ireland  of  the 
industries  which  intelligence  and  liberty  would  de- 
velop. 

Yet  some  learning,  some  hope  of  freedom  to  ac- 
quire learning,  lingered  among  the  people,  and  the 
traditions  of  the  culture  of  former  days,  however 
rude  and  meagre  their  form,  were  fondly  handed 
down.  "  By  the  fireside  on  a  winter  night,"  writes 
Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy,  "  at  fairs  and  markets,  the 
old  legends  and  traditions  were  a  favorite  recreation. 
The  wandering  harpers  and  pipers  kept  them  alive ; 
the  itinerant  schoolmaster  taught  them  with  more 
unction  than  the  rudiments.  Nurses  and  seam- 
stresses, the  tailor  who  carried  his  lapboard  and 
shears  from   house  to   house    and  from    district   to 


128  A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE. 

district,  the  peddler  who  came  from  the  capital 
with  shawls  and  ribbons,  the  tinker  who  paid  for 
his  supper  and  shelter  with  a  song  or  a  story, 
were  always  ready  with  tales  of  the  wars  and  the 
persecutions.  A  recent  historian  (Froude)  cannot 
repress  his  disdain  that  in  these  times— for  this 
was  the  Augustan  age  of  Queen  Anne — no  great 
drama  or  epic  poem  or  masterpiece  of  art  was 
produced  in  Ireland;  but  it  is  not  on  the  gaolers 
in  this  penal  settlement,  but  their  prisoners,  that 
the  critic's  reproaches  fall." 

What  improvement  had  been  made  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  boastful  century  ?  For  the  still 
insignificant  Protestant  minority  education  was  free, 
abundant  and  attractive.  There  was  the  great  Uni- 
versity of  Dublin,  with  its  professorships,  its  scholar- 
ships, its  patronage  and  its  honors:  no  CathoHc 
could  enter  it.  For  the  masses  of  the  people  there 
were  still  only  the  illegal  hedge-schools ;  and  it  is 
an  imperishable  proof  of  the  love  the  Irish  people 
had  for  knowledge  that  these  open-air  schools — as 
certain  to  be  suppressed,  if  discovered  by  the  police, 
as  are  the  Land-League  meetings .  in  Ireland  to-day 
— graduated  scholars  whose  attainments  were  far 
from  contemptible,  and  whose  stores  of  learning 
were  generously  poured  out  to  all  with  whom  they 
came  in  contact. 

The  burdens  which  the  landlords  imposed  upon 
the  people  were  heavy  enough,  but  they  had  also  to 
support  a  State-Church  which  they  did  not  attend. 


A   NA  TION  MADE   ILLITERA  TE.  1 29 

The  clergy  of  that  Church  maintained  themselves  in 
a  princely  manner  at  the  expense  of  those  who  lived 
in  squalor  and  who  believed  none  of  their  doctrines. 
Nor,  indeed,  were  these  doctrines  obtrusively  preach- 
ed, for  in  many  of  the  parishes  there  was  no  congre- 
gation. The  ministers  had  to  be  supported  by  those 
who  were  not  of  their  religion,  and  the  tithes  were 
as  odious  as  they  were  oppressive. 

In  1832  four-fifths  of  the  population  of  Ireland 
could  neither  read  nor  write.  English  law  had  re- 
duced a  nation  to  illiteracy. 

It  would  be  rash  for  the  fair-minded  American  to 
assume  that,  having  given  the  masses  of  the  people 
of  Ireland  liberty  of  conscience  in  1829,  free  schools 
sustained  by  Irish  taxes  in  1832,  and  abolished  the 
State-Church  in  1870,  the  conscience  and  the  intel- 
lect of  the  masses  of  the  Irish  people  are  now  alike 
free.  There  is  to-day  a  Catholic  university  in  Ire- 
land, founded  by  voluntary  contributions,  but  the 
English  government  does  not  permit  it  to  confer  de- 
grees. At  the  same  time,  the  University  of  Dublin 
is  essentially  Protestant ;  the  astounding  fact  stands 
forth  that  without  offence  to  his  conscientious  convic- 
tions a  Catholic  cannot  obtain  a  university  degree  in 
a  country  of  which  four-fifths  of  the  taxpayers  who 
sustain  the  schools  are  Catholics ! 

To  best  extinguish  as  rapidly  as  possible  the  ab- 
stract idea  of  nationality  in  Ireland,  the  use  of  the 
native  language  was  made  penal ;  but  so  tenacious 
were  the  people  of  the  tongue  in  which  their  fathers 


130  A   NATION  MADE   ILLITERATE. 

composed  a  noble  literature  that  to  fifteen  per  cent 
of  them  Gaelic  is  still  a  living  speech.  The  deter- 
mination of  the  English  government  to  extinguish 
the  idea  of  nationality  shows  itself  even  now  more 
conspicuously  in  the  national  schools.  No  history 
of  Ireland  is  permitted  to  be  studied  in  them. 

In  spite  of  the  extreme  poverty  of  the  country, 
and  by  sacrifices  which  must  be  heroic,  the  people 
are  acquiring  education  by  using  such  advantages  as 
they  are  allowed :  there  are  to-day  more  than  a  mil- 
lion children  in  the  schools,  national  and  denomina- 
tional ;  and  the  tragic  and  exasperating  story  of  their 
country's  wrongs  is  fearfully  pored  over  at  the  hum- 
blest firesides,  although  it  is  excluded  from  the 
schools.  The  idea  of  distinct  nationality  cannot  be 
extinguished;  and  the  method  now  resorted  to  to 
keep  it  out  of  the  consciousness  of  the  intelligent 
Irish  youth  only  inspires  them  with  a  more  deter- 
mined love  of  it.  If  they  cannot  read  the  Gaelic  of 
the  bards,  they  can  read  the  English  of  Thomas 
Davis. 

The  eminent  English  critic — a  Protestant  of  the 
Protestants — Mathew  Arnold  thus  characterizes  the 
refusal  of  the  English  Parliament  to  allow  the  major- 
ity of  the  people  of  Ireland  the  same  rights  in  higher 
education  which  are  enjoyed  in  other  parts  of  the 
British  empire  and  in  every  other  civilized  country  : 

"  All  that  by  our  genial  policy  we  seem  to  have 
succeeded  in  inspiring  in  the  Irish  themselves  is  an 
aversion  to  us  so  violent  that  for  England  to  incline 


A   A' A  TION  MADE   ILL  ITER  A  TE.  1  3  F 

one  way  is  a  sufficient  reason  to  make  Ireland  incline 
another,  and  the  obstruction  offered  by  the  Irish 
members  in  Parliament  is  really  an  expression,  above 
all,  of  this  uncontrollable  antipathy.  Nothing  is  more 
honorable  to  French  civilization  than  its  success  in 
attaching  strongly  to  France — France  Catholic  and 
Celtic — the  German  and  Protestant  Alsace.  What  a 
contrast  to  the  humiliating  failure  of  British  civiliza- 
tion to  attach  to  Germanic  and  Protestant  Great 
Britain  the  Celtic  and  Catholic  Ireland ! 

"  For  my  part,  I  have  never  affected  to  be  either 
surprised  or  indignant  at  the  antipathy  of  the  Irish 
to  us.  What  they  have  had  to  suffer  from  us  in  past 
times  all  the  world  knows,  and  now,  when  we  profess 
to  practise  '  a  great  and  genial  policy  of  conciliation  * 
toward  them,  they  are  really  governed  by  us  in  def- 
erence to  the  opinion  and  sentiment  of  the  British 
middle  class,  and  of  the  strongest  part  of  this  class — 
the  Puritan  community.  I  have  pointed  out  this  be- 
fore, but  in  a  book  about  schools,  and  which  only 
those  who  are  concerned  with  schools  are  likely  to 
have  read.  Let  me  be  suffered,  therefore,  to  repeat 
it  here.  The  opinion  and  sentiment  of  our  middle 
class  controls  the  policy  of  our  statesmen  toward 
Ireland.  That  policy  does  not  represent  the  real 
mind  of  our  leading  statesmen,  but  the  mind  of  the 
British  middle  class  controUing  the  action  of  states- 
men. The  ability  of  our  popular  journalists  and  suc- 
cessful statesmen  goes  to  putting  the  best  color  they 
can  upon  the  action  so  controlled,  but  a  disinterested 


132  A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE 

observer  will  see  an  action  so  controlled  to  be  what 
it  is,  and  will  call  it  what  it  is.  The  great  failure  in 
our  actual  national  life  is  the  imperfect  civilization 
of  our  middle  class.  The  great  need  of  our  time  is 
the  transformation  of  the  British  Puritan.  Our  Pu- 
ritan middle  class  presents  a  defective  type  of  relig- 
ion, a  narrow  range  of  intellect  and  knowledge,  a 
stunted  sense  of  beauty,  a  low  standard  of  manner. 
And  yet  it  is  in  deference  to  the  opinion  and  senti- 
ment of  such  a  class  that  we  shape  our  policy  toward 
Ireland.  And  we  wonder  at  Ireland's  antipathy  to 
us !  Nay,  we  expect  Ireland  to  lend  herself  to  the 
make-believe  of  our  own  journalists  and  statesmen, 
and  to  call  our  policy  *  genial ' ! 

"  The  Irish  Catholics,  who  are  the  immense  major- 
ity in  Ireland,  want  a  Catholic  university.  Elsewhere 
both  Catholics  and  Protestants  have  universities  where 
their  sons  may  be  taught  by  persons  of  their  own 
form  of  religion.  Catholic  France  allowed  the  Prot- 
estants of  Alsace  to  have  the  Protestant  university 
of  Strasburg ;  Protestant  Prussia  allows  the  Catholics 
of  the  Rhine  province  to  have  the  Catholic  university 
of  Bonn ;  the  Protestants  of  Ireland  have  in  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  a  university  where  the  teachers  in 
all  those  great  matters  which  afford  debatable  ground 
between  Catholics  and  Protestant  are  Protestant ;  the 
Protestants  of  Scotland  have  universities  of  a  like 
character;  in  England  the  members  of  the  English 
Church  have  in  Oxford  and  Cambridge  universities 
where   the    teachers   are   almost   wholly   Anglican. 


A   NATION  MADE  ILLITERATE.  1 33 

Well,  the  Irish  Catholics  asked  to  be  allowed  the 
same  thing. 

"There  is  extraordinary  difficulty  in  getting  this 
demand  of  theirs  directly  and  frankly  met.  They 
are  told  that  they  want  secondary  schools  even 
more  than  a  university.  That  may  be  very  true, 
but  they  do  also  want  a  university ;  and  to  ask  for 
one  institution  is  a  simpler  affair  than  to  ask  for  a 
great  many.  They  are  told  they  have  the  queen's 
colleges,  invented  expressly  for  Ireland.  But  they 
do  not  want  colleges  invented  expressly  for  Ireland : 
they  want  colleges  such  as  those  the  English  and 
Scotch  have  in  Scotland  and  England.  They  are 
told  that  they  may  have  a  university  of  the  London 
type,  an  examining  board,  and  perhaps  a  system  of 
prizes.  But  all  the  world  is  not,  like  Mr.  Lowe, 
enamored  of  examining  boards  and  prizes.  The 
world  in  general  much  prefers  to  universities  of  the 
London  type  universities  of  the  type  of  Strasburg, 
Bonn,  Oxford ;  and  the  Irish  are  of  the  same  mind 
as  the  world  in  general.  They  are  told  that  Mr. 
Gladstone's  government  offered  them  a  university 
without  theology,  philosophy  or  history,  and  that 
they  refused  it.  But  the  world  in  general  does  not 
desire  universities  with  theology,  philosophy  and 
history  left  out;  no  more  did  Ireland.  They  are 
told  that  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  is  now  an  unsec- 
tarian  university,  no  more  Protestant  than  Catholic, 
and  that  they  may  use  Trinity  College.  But  the 
teaching  in  Trinity  College  is,  and  long  will  be  (and 


134  A    NATION  MADE   ILLITERATE. 

very  naturally),  for  the  most  part  in  the  hands  of 
Protestants ;  the  whole  character,  tradition  and  atmo- 
sphere of  the  place  are  Protestant.  The  Irish  Cath- 
olics want  to  have  on  their  side,  too,  a  place  where 
the  university  teaching  is  in  the  hands  of  Catholics, 
and  of  which  the  character  and  atmosphere  shall  be 
Catholic.  But  then  they  are  asked  whether  they 
propose  to  do  away  with  all  the  manifold  and  deep- 
rooted  results  of  Protestant  ascendency  in  Ireland, 
and  they  are  warned  that  this  would  be  a  hard — nay, 
an  impossible — matter.  But  they  are  not  proposing 
anything  so  enormous  and  chimerical  as  to  do  away 
with  all  the  results  of  Protestant  ascendency ;  they 
propose  merely  to  put  an  end  to  one  particular  and 
very  cruel  result  of  it — the  result  that  they,  the  im- 
mense majority  of  the  Irish  people,  have  no  univer- 
sity, while  the  Protestants  of  Ireland,  the  small  mi- 
nority, have  one.  For  this  plain  hardship  they  pro- 
pose a  plain  remedy,  and  to  their  proposal  they  want 
a  plain  and  straightforward  answer. 

•'  And  at  last  they  get  it.  It  is  the  papal  answer, 
Non  possiinms.  The  English  ministry  and  Parlia- 
ment may  wish  to  give  them  what  they  demand, 
may  think  this  claim  just,  but  they  cannot  give  it 
them.  In  the  mind  and  temper  of  the  English  peo- 
ple there  is  an  unconquerable  obstacle.  *  The  claims 
of  the  Irish  Roman  Catholics,'  says  the  Times,  '  are 
inconsistent  with  the  practical  conditions  of  politics. 
It  is  necessary  to  repeat  the  simple  fact  that  the 
temper  of  the  people  of  Great  Britain  will  not  ad- 


A  NATION  MADE   ILLITERATE.  1 35 

mit  of  any  endowment  of  Catholic  institutions.  We 
should  recognize  the  futility  of  contending  against 
the  most  rooted  of  popular  prejudices.'  'The  de- 
mand for  the  state  endowment  of  a  Catholic  univer- 
sity or  of  a  Catholic  college,'  says  the  Saturday  Re- 
view, *may  be  perfectly  just,  but  at  the  same  time 
perfectly  impracticable.  The  determination  not  to 
grant  it  may  be  quite  illogical,  but  it  is  very  firmly 
rooted.* " 


CHAPTER    VI. 
THE  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY, 

ENGLISH  armies  and  English  penal  laws  suc- 
ceeded in  establishing  foreign  landlordism  in 
Ireland :  the  heirs  of  the  rightful  owners  are  now  the 
tenants  of  the  heirs  of  those  to  whom  the  confiscated 
lands  were  given.  John  Bright  fixes  the  number  of 
these  landlords  at  six  thousand ;  Michael  Davitt, 
who  has  studied  the  question  still  more  closely,  says 
the  number  is  more  nearly  three  thousand.  These 
three  thousand  have  an  entire  nation  for  tenants. 
Seventy-five  per  cent,  of  these  tenants  were  practically, 
down  to  the  passage  of  the  Land  Act  of  1881,  tenants- 
at-will.  They  could  be  expelled  from  their  holding 
at  the  caprice  of  the  landlord  whether  they  paid  their 
rent  or  not.  Expulsion  was  for  most  of  them  a  sen- 
tence of  death. 

The  rent  extorted  was  always  so  high  that  the 
tenant,  even  in  the  best  seasons,  could  barely  live  ; 
to  save  a  shilling  from  year  to  year  was  impossi- 
ble. If  the  harvest  was  good,  he  sold  his  crops  to 
pay  his  rent ;  on  a  portion  of  the  farm  he  raised  po- 
tatoes to  feed  his  family,  the  labor  of  all  of  whom, 
i;^6 


THE   IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY.  1 37 

young  and  old,  of  both  sexes,  was  required  on  the 
farm.  If  the  potato  crop  failed,  the  family  was  in 
danger  of  starvation,  because  the  money  obtained  for 
the  crops  had  to  go  to  the  landlord  and  there  was 
nothing  left  with  whicTi  to  buy  food.  If  the  harvest 
was  bad  for  all  the  crops — and  bad  harvests  are  not 
uncommon — the  rent  could  not  be  paid ;  the  tenant 
was  then  evicted,  and,  having  neither  home  nor 
money,  he  and  his  family  perished  by  the  roadside. 
The  rents  of  Ireland  have  oftener  caused  famine 
than  have  bad  harvests.  Did  Americans  fail  to  ob- 
serve, when  collections  were  being  taken  up  in  all 
parts  of  the  United  States,  two  years  ago,  for  the 
famine-stricken  people  of  Ireland,  that  it  was  dis- 
tinctly stated  by  all  the  relief  committees  that  money, 
not  food,  was  wanted?  There  was  no  scarcity  of 
food  in  Ireland.  The  famine  was  not  a  natural  but 
an  artificial  one.  The  food  was  the  property  of  the 
landlords,  to  whom  the  tenants  had  to  give  it  for 
rent;  it  was  necessary  that  money  should  be  sent 
from  America  to  buy  it  for  the  tenants  from  the  land- 
lords. It  was  only  the  potato  crop  that  had  failed ; 
all  the  other  fruits  of  the  soil  in  Ireland  are  the  prop- 
erty of  the  landlords  :  they  are  the  equivalent  of  rent. 
Food  was  being  exported  from  Ireland,  while  money 
was  being  sent  there  in  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dol- 
lars to  save  the  tillers  and  the  rightful  owners  of  its 
soil  from  death  by  famine.  The  same  extraordinary 
phenomenon  was  presented  in  the  more  awful  famine 
season  of  1847,  when  millions  perished  of  hunger 


138  THE  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY. 

and  by  fever.  Corn  was  exported  that  year  from  the 
Irish  ports  to  English  consignees  to  be  sold  in  Liv- 
erpool to  pay  Irish  rents  to  absentee  landlords. 

Sometimes  the  famines  have  been  natural,  the  entire 
harvests  being  bad;  but  the  rule  in  Ireland  is  that 
famines  there  are  artificial.  They  are  the  result  of 
exorbitant  rents ;  they  are  made,  not  by  God,  but  by 
landlords.  No  land  law  that  does  not  make  the 
landlord  share  with  the  tenant  the  misfortunes  of  a 
bad  harvest  will  be  either  an  act  of  justice  or  an  act 
of  peace  for  that  country. 

The  condition  to  which  excessive  rents  and  the 
possibility  of  eviction  have  reduced  Irish  tenants 
is  unparalleled  in  any  other  country,  in  any  other 
age.  When  evicted  they  '*  will  cower,  often  for  days 
and  weeks  together,"  says  the  English  economist 
Professor  Cairnes,  "  in  ditches  by  the  roadside,  de- 
pendent for  their  support  on  casual  charity."  When 
permitted  to  remain  on  their  little  farms,  what  is  their 
condition  ?  One  of  abject  poverty.  Its  depth  is  in- 
dicated by  their  food,  their  clothing  and  their  shelter. 

Their  food  is  the  potato. 

Their  clothing  is  the  most  meagre  covering  of 
nakedness.  They  rarely  have  hats  or  shoes,  or  a 
second  garment  of  any  kind. 

Their  shelter?  Mud  cabins  without  the  simplest 
conveniences  of  civilization. 

In  the  latest  census  the  Irish  dwellings  are  divided 
into  four  classes.  The  first  are  comfortable  and  sub- 
stantial ;  the  second  are  houses  of  from  five  to  nine 


X 

o 

c 

CO 

m 
c 


THE  IRISH  TENANT   TO-DAY.  I4I 

rooms,  on  farms  or  in  towns ;  the  third  and  fourth 
are  mud  houses  ;  the  fourth  are  mud  houses  of  only- 
one  room,  generally  without  window  or  chimney. 
Of  the  third  and  fourth  classes  there  are  five  hundred 
and  twelve  thousand  eight  hundred  and  one.  Esti- 
mating five  persons  to  a  family — which  is  a  small 
estimate  for  Ireland — there  are  two  and  a  half  mil- 
lion persons  living  in  mud  houses,  and  more  than 
half  of  them  in  mud  hovels  of  one  room. 

To  these  wretched  people  the  land  of  Ireland  be- 
longs by  natural  law — law  which  no  economist  has 
assailed,  law  which  English  economists  have  been 
the  most  emphatic  in  asserting. 

**  The  land  of  any  country  is  the  property  of  the 
nation  occupying  that  country,"  says  Froude.  "  The 
great  evil  of  Ireland,"  said  John  Bright,  "  is  this — 
that  the  Irish  people,  the  Irish  nation,  are  dispos- 
sessed from  the  soil."  "  The  surplus  profit  is  what 
the  farmer  can  afford  to  pay  as  rent  to  the  landlord," 
says  John  Stuart  Mill.  "  Rent  is  surplus  profit," 
says  Bonamy  Price.  Speaking  of  those  who  affirm- 
ed that  economic  laws  do  not  apply  to  Ireland  on 
account  of  her  unfortunate  situation,  Professor  Cairnes 
says  :  "  In  my  opinion,  it  is  a  radically  false  and  prac- 
tically a  most  mischievous  view — one  against  which, 
alike  in  the  interest  of  the  peace  of  Ireland  and  for 
the  credit  of  economic  science,  I  am  anxious  with 
all  my  energy  to  protest."  Again  he  says  :  "  I  have 
already  stated  what  I  conceive  to  be  the  economic 
basis  of  property-^-the  right  of  the  producer  to  the 


142  THE  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY. 

thing  he  has  produced.  ...  I  will  suppose  a  farm 
which  owes  nothing  of  any  kind  to  the  landlord's 
outlay,  on  which  the  whole  capital,  fixed  and  circu- 
lating, in  buildings,  fences,  manure  and  wages,  has 
been  advanced  by  the  cultivator,  and  I  will  suppose 
that  the  soil  of  the  farm  is  the  worst  possible  qual- 
ity compatible  with  profitable  cultivation.  These 
conditions  being  supposed,  how  much  of  the  wealth 
produced  from  the  farm  represents  the  due  reward 
of  the  cultivator's  exertions  ?     I  answer.  The  whole." 

Let  us  see  how  this  principle  has  been  applied  in 
the  relations  of  landlord  and  tenant  in  Ireland  under 
the  laws  which  began  in  the  confiscations,  were  con- 
firmed by  the  penal  statutes  and  have  been  enforced 
by  the  armies  of  England  in  Ireland. 

Professor  Cairnes  thinks  his  imaginary  case  ex- 
treme, but  not  absolutely  impossible ;  and  he  mod- 
ifies his  conclusion  as  to  the  right  of  a  farmer  to  all 
he  produces  if  the  landlord  had  furnished  any  por- 
tion of  the  capital  expended  on  the  farm.  But  in 
Ireland  there  are  tens  of  thousands  of  farms  on 
which  the  landlord  never  expended  a  penny  of  cap- 
ital, and  in  that  country  the  imaginary  case,  instead 
of  being  extreme,  is  common.  But  with  what  re- 
sults ?  The  landlord  rented  the  land  to  the  tenant ; 
perhaps  there  was  no  cottage  or  even  mud  cabin  on 
it.  The  landlord  would  neither  build  a  dwelling  nor 
loan  the  tenant  the  money  to  build  it;  the  tenant 
built  some  sort  of  shelter.  Was  it  then  the  property 
of  the  tenant  ?     No  ;  it  belongs  to  the  landlord.     Per- 


THE  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY,  1 43 

haps  there  was  not  a  fence  on  the  land ;  the  tenant 
built  the  fences.  Did  the  landlord  not  allow  him 
the  outlay  in  a  rebate  of  rent  ?  No ;  the  fences  have 
become  the  property  of  the  landlord.  Perhaps  the 
land  was  wholly  without  drainage ;  the  tenant  drain- 
ed it.  Surely  the  landlord  compensated  him  for  his 
time  and  labor  ?  No ;  the  drainage  now  is  part  of 
the  landlord's  estate.  Possibly  the  soil  was  not  in  a 
favorable  condition  for  the  crops;  the  tenant  must 
first  nurse  it  and  feed  it  and  coax  it.  Did  he  receive 
no  compensation  ?  Under  the  law  he  was  entitled 
to  none.  Said  Lord  Sherbrooke :  "  The  Irish  tenant 
knows  perfectly  well  that  he  has  no  claim  in  equity 
or  otherwise  to  payment  for  the  cabin  he  may  build, 
the  bog  he  may  drain  or  the  stones  he  may  roll 
away."  ^  And  after  he  had  built  the  cabin  or  the 
cottage,  and  drained  the  bogs,  and  put  up  the  fences, 
and  wheedled  or  enticed  the  mountain-side  into  geni- 
ality, the  landlord  could  step  in  and  say :  "  When  I 
rented  you  this  farm  it  was  worth  only  ten  pounds  a 
year.  It  was  not  drained ;  it  was  not  fenced ;  it  need- 
ed manure  and  labor  before  seeding ;  there  was  no 
dwelling  on  it.  Now  all  these  things  are  accom- 
plished ;  therefore  the  farm  is  worth  a  higher  rent. 
You  must  now  pay  twenty  pounds  a  year." 

"  But  I  cannot,"  plead  the  tenant. 

"Then  go,"  said  the  landlord.  "Go,"  said  the 
law. 

1  "  Legislation  for  Ireland,"  The  Nineteenth  Century,  November, 
1880. 


144  ^^^^  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY. 

"Will  you  allow  me  nothing  for  the  permanent 
improvements  I  have  made  ?"  begged  the  tenant. 

"  Not  a  farthing,"  said  the  landlord.  "  Not  a  far- 
thing," said  the  law. 

How  long  would  the  American  people  submit  to 
such  a  law  ? 

Occasionally  there  was  a  landlord  who  recognized 
the  right  of  the  tenant  to  compensation  for  labor 
which  permanently  raised  the  value  of  the  land. 
But  every  such  landlord  has  been  better  than  the 
law.  There  are  not  many  of  them.  Lord  Sher- 
brooke  is  anxious  that  the  world  shall  not  misjudge 
the  landlords.  He  is  willing  that  legislation  should 
do  something  for  the  tenant,  but  the  landlords  must 
not  be  required  to  pay  the  tenants  for  improvements. 
In  refusing  to  do  so  they  acted  strictly  in  accord- 
ance with  the  law. 

"  If  a  man,"  inquires  Lord  Sherbrooke,  "  is  not 
safe  in  directing  his  course  by  the  law  of  the  land, 
where  is  he  to  look  for  safety  ?" 

"  There  are  no  bounds  to  the  tenant's  liabilities," 
says  Mr.  Thornton,^  "  and  no  security  against  his 
ejection." 

It  is  desirable  that  Americans  should  understand 
precisely  what  the  law  has  been  for  the  tenure  of 
land  in  Ireland,  and  here  it  is,  stated  by  a  distin- 
guished and  experienced  gentleman,  better  known 
in  this  country  as  Mr.  Robert  Lowe. 

The  law  of  land  tenure,  then,  was  in  brief  this : 

^  A  Plea  for  Peasant  Proprietors,  p.  190. 


THE  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY.  1 45 

The  labor  of  the  tenant  was  perpetually  confis- 
cated. 

When  his  industry  turned  his  labor  into  capital  in 
the  form  of  permanent  improvements  on  his  holding, 
his  capital  was  confiscated.  What  money  capital  he 
used  in  improving  the  holding  was  confiscated. 

Thrift  would  have  inspired  him  to  improve  the 
farm,  but  the  fruits  of  his  thrift  would  have  been 
confiscated. 

The  improvement  of  the  holding  would  give  su- 
perior crops ;  he  would  have  more  money  when  the 
rent  was  paid ;  he  could  send  his  children  to  school. 
No ;  the  improvement  of  the  farm  would  have  brought 
with  more  absolute  certainty  an  increase  in  the  rent. 
When  the  increased  rent  had  been  paid,  there  would 
be  less  money  left  to  send  the  children  to  school  or 
to  buy  physical  necessaries. 

"  The  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  tenant 
cannot  be  brought  about,"  insists  a  political  econ- 
omist, "  except  by  the  improvement  of  his  farm." 
That  is  true  everywhere  but  in  Ireland.  There  the 
improvement  of  the  farm  made  the  condition  of  the 
tenant  worse.  His  labor  was  confiscated ;  his  money 
was  confiscated ;  his  thrift  was  punished ;  his  indus- 
try was  turned  into  misfortune.  If  he  improved  his 
farm,  his  rent  was  raised  or  he  was  turned  off  it 
without  the  means  of  procuring  shelter.  The  rent 
was  kept  up  to  the  highest  competition  rates  in  all 
seasons.  He  could  not,  in  good  season  or  in  bad, 
however  great  his  energy  or  complete  his  self-sacri- 


146  THE   IRISH   TENANT   TO-DAY, 

fice,  save  enough  to  give  his  children  a  chance  to 
rise  above  the  squalor  in  which  they  were  born. 

It  was  the  interest  of  the  tenant,  therefore,  not  to 
be  thrifty ;  it  was  his  interest  not  to  be  industrious ; 
it  was  his  interest  not  to  make  any  effort  to  better 
himself;  it  was  his  interest  to  keep  his  children  in 
squalor;  it  was  his  interest  to  be  as  wretched  as 
possible. 

A  law  which  makes  these  things  the  interest  of 
human  beings  is  a  law  against  nature.  Blackstone, 
a  most  fervent  Englishman,  who  glories,  pardonably, 
in  her  laws  and  the  greatness  which  they  have  pro- 
duced, and  which  in  turn  has  produced  them,  says 
that  laws  against  nature  have  no  validity.  Froude, 
an  Englishman  who  loves  his  own  land  as  intensely 
as  he  hates  its  victim -sister,  says  :  "  Land  is  not,  and 
cannot  be,  property  in  the  sense  in  which  movable 
things  are  property.  Every  human  being  born  into 
this  planet  must  live  upon  the  land  if  he  lives  at  all. 
The  land  in  any  country  is  really  the  property  of 
the  nation  which  occupies  it;"  which  is  true  in 
every  country  but  Ireland. 

There  has  hitherto  been  slight  difference  in  the 
land  laws  of  England  and  Ireland,  and  that  difference, 
strange  to  say,  was  in  favor  of  Ireland.  England  has 
never  had  the  advantages  of  the  encumbered  estates 
court  or  of  its  twin-tribunal  the  landed  estates  court. 
We  shall  reach  these  in  time.  But  how  vastly  in 
favor  of  the  English  tenant  is  the  operation  of  the 
land  laws !     In  England  the  landlord  makes  all  the 


THE  IRISH  TENANT   TO-DAY.  1 47 

improvements.  The  tenant,  generally  speaking,  has 
fixity  of  tenure — so  long,  at  least,  as  he  pays  his  rent. 
Not  being  compelled  to  make  the  improvements,  or 
being  equitably  compensated  for  such  as  he  does 
make  which  increase  the  permanent  value  of  the 
farm,  his  labor  is  rewarded  and  he  is  able  to  save 
money.  If  the  lord  should  be  pleased  to  turn  his 
farm  into  park  or  put  it  to  manufacturing  purposes, 
the  departing  tenant  cannot  complain  for  the  same 
reason  that  exists  to  the  ruin  of  his  Irish  brother. 
His  labor  has  not  been  confiscated ;  his  capital  has 
not  been  stolen ;  his  industry  has  not  been  punished  ; 
his  thrift  has  not  been  turned  into  calamity.  In  his 
interesting,  if  not  profound,  England,  her  People,  Pol- 
ity and  Pursidts,  Mr.  T.  H.  S.  Escott  gives  an  impos- 
ing picture  of  the  "Great  Landlords  and  Estate  Man- 
agement." It  is  altogether  too  flattering  toward  them, 
for  the  English  tenant-farmer  has  something  to  say 
to  his  countrymen  when  he  shall  have  obtained  ad- 
equate representation  in  Parliament.  But  it  is  at  least 
true  that  the  land  laws  are  as  leniently  administered 
in  England  as  such  laws  are  likely  ever  to  be.  The 
duke  of  Devonshire,  for  instance,  makes  all  the  im- 
provements on  the  farms  he  rents.  Agreements  are 
annual  between  the  duke  and  his  tenants,  but  there 
is  a  revaluation  only  every  twenty-one  years.  "  This 
arrangement,"  says  Mr.  Escott,  "  comes  to  very  much 
the  same  thing  as  a  lease  for  that  term.  The  tenants 
know  very  well  that  so  long  as  they  do  their  duty 
by  the  land  they  will  not  receive  notice  to  quit ;  and 


148  THE   IRISH  TENANT   TO-DAY, 

here,  as  elsewhere,  the  archives  of  the  estate  show 
many  cases  in  which  farms  have  been  in  possession 
of  the  same  famiHes,  from  father  to  son,  for  many- 
generations,  and  not  unfrequently  for  two  or  three 
centuries."  ^  "  There  are  estates  "  in  Ireland  "  where 
a  notice  to  quit,"  says  Mr.  Samuelson,  "  is  printed  on 
the  back  of  each  half-year's  receipt  for  rent ;  so  that 
the  tenants  are  under  perpetual  notice."  ^  "  When  the 
revaluation  is  made,"  Mr.  Escott  goes  on,  "  a  full 
report  of  the  condition  of  all  the  farms  and  other 
portions  of  the  property  is  drawn  up.  Anything  that 
can  throw  light  on  the  management  of  a  particular 
holding  and  the  qualities  displayed  by  a  particular 
tenant  are  duly  noted  down,  as  also  are  the  improve- 
ments which  it  may  be  considered  desirable  to  insti- 
tute or  which  the  tenant  himself  may  have  suggested 
as  necessary.  It  is  then  for  the  duke  and  his  agents 
to  consider  whether  the  property  shall  remain  in  the 
same  hands  and  what  repairs  shall  be  effected.  In 
consideration  of  such  repairs  as  may  finally  be  carried 
out,  either  a  permanent  addition  is  made  to  the  rent 
or  else  the  tenant  is  charged  a  percentage  on  the 
money  expended."  "  Improvements  in  the  way  of 
drainage,"  Mr.  Escott  says,  describing  the  tenancies 
of  Westminster,  Northumberland,  Cleveland  and 
Devonshire  estates,  "  improvements  in  the  way  of 
drainage,  buildings,  roads  and  fences,  are  either  done 

*  England,  p.  38. 

^  SttuHes  of  the  Land  and  Tenantry  of  Ireland,  by  B.  Samuelson, 
M.  P.,  p.  13. 


THE  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY.  1 49 

at  the  expense  of  the  landlord,  or,  if  the  tenant  im- 
mediately defrays  their  cost,  he  receives  compensa- 
tion from  the  landlord."^  Mr.  Samuelson  says  of 
the  Irish  tenant  that,  except  on  the  estates  of  some 
large  proprietors,  the  tenants  have  made  every  im- 
provement. They  **  have  erected  the  house  and 
steadings,  have  built  every  fence,  have  drained  the 
farm  more  or  less  perfectly,  in  many  cases  have 
reclaimed  it  from  the  mountain  or  bog."  Yet  the 
rule  has  been  that  the  landlord  allowed  the  tenant 
nothing  for  all  this  even  on  eviction.  "  As  far  as  the 
law  is  concerned,"  it  is  "  entirely  at  the  option  of  the 
landlord  "  to  "  make  an  allowance  to  the  tenant  for 
any  or  all  these  improvements  or  let  him  dispose  of 
them  to  his  successor,  or  whether  he  will  confiscate 
them  as  his  own  property." 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  authorities  on  the 
different  operation  of  the  laws  regulating  land  in  the 
two  countries,  but  these  two  Englishmen  have  stated 
it  with  sufficient  distinctness.  In  England  there  is 
practically  security  of  tenure ;  in  Ireland  there  has 
been  practically  perpetual  notice  to  quit.  In  England 
the  tenant  receives  compensation  for  improvements 
or  the  landlord  makes  them  at  his  own  expense ;  in 
Ireland  the  tenant  made  all  the  improvements  and 
the  landlord  confiscated  them.  In  England  the  rent 
is  not  raised,  generally  speaking,  except  every  twenty- 
one  years,  and  then  after  a  fair  revaluation;  in  Ireland, 
generally  speaking,  the  rent  has  been  raised  when- 

*  England,  p.  40. 


I50  THE   IRISH   TENANT  TO-DAY. 

ever  the  landlord's  agent  thought  he  could  extort 
another  shilling  out  of  the  tenant.  In  England  cap- 
ital is  permanently  united  with  the  land ;  in  Ireland 
capital  has  been  perrnanently  divorced  from  the  land. 
In  England,  if  the  tenant  must  give  up  his  holding, 
there  are  all  the  vast  industries  of  his  country  for 
him  to  seek  employment  in ;  in  Ireland  there  is  only 
one  industry,  the  land.  The  tenant  turned  out  of  his 
holding,  moneyless,  without  skill  for  any  other  call- 
ing, can  find  no  other  employment :  he  must  starve, 
or  commit  crime  and  go  to  jail,  or  emigrate. 

Another  feature  exclusively  peculiar  to  the  con- 
dition of  the  Irish  tenant  is  that  in  many  cases  he 
does  not  even  know  who  his  landlord  is ;  in  still 
more  he  knows  who  he  is,  but  never  sees  him,  and 
any  appeal  which  he  might  wish  to  make  for  justice 
or  for  humanity  has  to  be  made  to  an  agent  w^hose 
selfish  interest  requires  that  he  shall  extort  the 
highest  possible  rent  from  the  tenant.  Absenteeism 
is  an  old  evil  in  Ireland,  and  was  one  of  the  inevita- 
ble consequences  of  the  confiscations,  as  has  been 
already  sufficiently  shown.  The  Irish  Parliament 
undertook  to  remedy  it  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago.  Taxation  was  tried ;  confiscation  of  a  portion 
of  the  absentee's  estate  was  decreed.  Swift  exposed 
all  its  hideous  features.  The  free — and  the  last — Irish 
Parliament  endeavored  to  grapple  with  it,  but  the 
class  at  whom  the  proposed  act  was  levelled  had 
retainers  enough  to  protect  their  interests.  The 
abolition  of  the  Parliament  and  the  transfer  of  the 


THE   IRISH  TENANT   TO-DAY.  151 

seat  of  legislation  for  Ireland  to  the  English  capital 
aggravated  absenteeism  by  increasing  the  induce- 
ments to  live  out  of  Ireland.  One  who  has  no 
sympathy  with  the  movement,  now  going  on  there 
writes :  "  This  is  not  a  matter  upon  which  one  is 
left  to  speculate,  for  there  is  visible  proof  of  the 
results  of  the  two  systems — the  system  of  residence 
and  the  system  of  absenteeism.  Those  parts  of 
Ireland  which  are  to-day  best  disposed  to  the  Eng- 
lish government,  which  are  freest  from  political 
agitation,  which  are  the  most  peaceful  and  law- 
abiding,  and  in  which  the  people  are  most  generally 
enlightened,  liberal  and  tolerant,  are  just  those  places 
where  the  land-owners  have  been  longest  and  most 
constantly  resident,  and  have  for  generations  faith- 
fully performed  the  duties  of  their  position ;  those 
parts  of  Ireland  where  the  people  are  most  lawless, 
most  ignorant,  most  superstitious,  poor  and  back- 
ward, are  the  places  where  absenteeism  has  thrown 
its  blighting  influence,  and  where  the  people  have 
been  left  to  themselves.  Had  absentees  but  done 
their  duty,  the  result  for  many  past  years  and  in  the 
present  day  would  have  been  far  different.  Unfor- 
tunately, as  it  is,  disturbance,  crime,  political  agita- 
tion and  disaffection  to  England, — these  were,  and 
are,  the  Nemesis  of  absenteeism,  a  Nemesis  visited, 
unfortunately,  not  on  the  absentees,  but  on  the 
kingdom  itself" 

Morally   considered,   absenteeism   is    one    of  the 
most  powerful  agents  in  reducing  the  Irish  tenantry 


152  THE  IRISH  TENANT  TO-DAY. 

to  poverty  and  keeping  them  in  it.  Many  a  land- 
lord who  resides  always,  or  nearly  always,  in  Eng- 
land or  on  the  Continent  would,  if  he  lived  upon 
his  own  estates,  be  touched  by  the  distress  of  his 
dependents.  His  representative  has  the  strongest 
motive  to  resist  every  instinct  of  humanity :  he  is 
paid  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  rent  he  can 
extort  from  the  tenants  and  send  to  his  distant 
master.  Absentee  landlords  draw  out  of  Ireland 
one-third  of  the  entire  rental  of  the  country,  not  a 
penny  of  which  returns  in  any  form  to  the  country 
and  the  people  producing  it.  Indeed,  it  is  not  in- 
accurate to  say  that  the  entire  rental  of  the  country 
is  an  absentee  rental,  since  even  the  resident  land- 
lords have  to  send  abroad  for  nine-tenths  of  the 
manufactured  articles  they  use  on  their  farms,  in 
their  stables  and  houses,  and  on  their  persons.  Why 
there  can  be  no  general  creation  of  manufactures  in 
Ireland  while  the  present  landlord  system  prevails 
has  been  sufficiently  shown  in  a  preceding  chapter. 


CHAPTER    VII. 
THE  PEASANT-FARMER  IN  OTHER  COUNTRIES, 

BY  peasant  proprietor  is  commonly  meant  a  farm- 
er who  owns  the  land  he  tills. 
"  Since  the  French  Revolution,"  writes  Mr.  W.  E. 
Baxter,  "the  feudal  laws  in  France,  Switzerland, 
Holland,  Belgium,  Norway,  Germany,  North  Italy 
and  Austria  have  been  abolished.  .  .  .  The  result  of 
this  change  in  all  these  countries  has  been,  in  many 
instances,  the  breaking  up  of  the  large,  unwieldy, 
unmanageable  estates  and  the  formation  of  a  numer- 
ous and  powerful  conservative  class  of  small  propri- 
etors. .  .  .  The  change  has  been  highly  beneficial 
wherever  it  has  been  brought  about,  peasants  former- 
ly in  as  miserable  a  condition  as  the  Irish  being  now 
contented  and  prosperous  owners  of  the  soil."  ^  "  It 
would  be  difficult,  perhaps,"  says  Professor  Cairnes, 
"  to  conceive  two  modes  of  existence  more  utterly 
opposed  than  the  thriftless,  squalid  and  half-starved 
life  of  the  peasant  of  Munster  and  Connaught  and 

*  Our  Land  Laws  of  the  Past,  by  the  Right  Hon.  W.  E.  Baxter, 
M.  P.  (London:  Cassell,  Patter,  Galpin  &  Co.),  page  17.  Mr. 
Baxter's  brochure  is  an  argument  for  refomi  of  the  land  laAvs  of 
England,  especially  in  relation  to  primogeniture  and  entail. 

US 


154       7'^^^   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE. 

that  of  the  frugal,  thriving  and  energetic  races  that 
have  over  a  great  portion  of  continental  Europe — in 
Norway,  in  Belgium,  in  Switzerland,  in  Lombardy — 
and  under  the  most  various  external  conditions,  turn- 
ed swamps  and  deserts  into  gardens."^ 

Let  us  look  first  at  that  "  transition  between  land 
and  sea,"  that  "  measureless  raft  of  mud  and  sand," 
and  discover  the  miracle  of  peasant  proprietary  in 
the  spot  where  it  is  most  marvellous.  In  his  charm- 
ing book  on  Holland,  Edmondo  de  Amicis  tells  the 
whole  sX.ory — what  it  was  in  the  beginning,  what  it  is 
now :  *'  There  were  vast  tempestuous  lakes  like  seas 
touching  one  another;  morass  beside  morass;  one 
tract  covered  with  brushwood  after  another;  im- 
mense forests  of  pines,  oaks  and  elders  traversed  by 
hordes  of  wild  horses ;  and  so  thick  were  these  for- 
ests that  tradition  says  one  could  travel  leagues  from 
tree  to  tree  without  ever  putting  foot  to  the  ground. 
The  deep  bays  and  gulfs  carried  into  the  heart  of  the 
country  the  fury  of  the  northern  tempests.  Some 
provinces  disappeared  once  every  year  under  the 
waters  of  the  sea  and  were  nothing  but  muddy  tracts, 
neither  land  nor  water,  where  it  was  impossible  either 
to  walk  or  to  sail.  The  large  rivers,  without  suffi- 
cient inclination  to  descend  to  the  sea,  wandered 
here  and  there  uncertain  of  their  way,  and  slept  in 
monstrous  pools  and  ponds  among  the  sands  of  the 
coasts.  It  was  a  sinister  place,  swept  by  furious 
winds,  beaten  by  obstinate  rains,  veiled  in  a  perpet- 

'  Essays,  p,  1 60. 


THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE.       1 55 

ual  fog,  where  nothing  was  heard  but  the  roar  of 
the  sea  and  the  voices  of  wild  beasts  and  birds  of 
the  ocean." 

And  what  is  the  Holland  of  to-day  ? 

Groningen  was  the  province  most  difficult  to  trans- 
form, and  even  in  the  sixteenth  century  a  great  part 
of  it  was  still  uninhabited.  De  Amicis  confirms  all 
that  Delaveleye,  that  capable  student  of  peasant 
proprietary,  has  written  of  it  and  its  towns  and  peo- 
ple:  "  Groningen,  in  fact,  is  like  a  species  of  republic 
governed  by  a  class  of  educated  peasants  ;  a  new  and 
virgin  country  where  no  patrician  castle  rears  its 
head  above  the  roof  of  the  tillers  of  the  soil ;  a  prov- 
ince where  the  products  of  the  land  remain  in  the 
hands  of  the  cultivators,  where  wealth  and  labor  al- 
ways go  hand  in  hand  and  idleness  and  opulence  are 
for  ever  divided."  And  to  what  is  this  almost  ideal 
state  to  be  attributed  ?  "  The  description  would  not 
be  complete  if  I  omitted  to  speak  of  a  certain  right 
peculiar  to  the  Groningen  peasantry  and  called  bek- 
leni-rcgt,  which  is  considered  as  the  principal  cause 
of  the  extraordinary  prosperity  of  the  province.  The 
bekleni-t'cgt  is  the  right  to  occupy  a  farm  with  the 
payment  of  an  annual  rent,  which  the  proprietor  can 
never  augment.  The  right  passes  to  the  heirs,  col- 
lateral as  well  as  direct,  and  the  holder  may  transmit 
it  by  will,  may  sell  it,  rent  it,  raise  a  mortgage  upon  it 
even,  without  the  consent  of  the  proprietor  of  the  land. 
Every  time,  however,  that  this  right  passes  from  one 
hand  to  another,  whether  by  inheritance  or  sale,  the 


156        THE  PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE. 

proprietor  receives  one  or  two  years'  rent.  The  farm- 
buildings  belong  in  general  to  the  possessor  of  the 
beklem-regt,  who,  when  his  right  is  in  any  way  an- 
nulled, may  exact  the  price  of  the  materials.  The 
possessor  of  the  beklem-regt  pays  all  taxes,  cannot 
change  the  form  of  the  property,  nor  in  any  way 
diminish  its  value.  The  beklem-regt  is  indivisible. 
One  person  only  can  possess  it,  and  consequently 
only  one  of  the  heirs  can  inherit  it.  However,  by  pay- 
ing the  sum  stipulated  in  case  of  the  passage  of  the 
beklem-regt  from  one  hand  to  another,  the  husband 
may  inscribe  his  wife  or  the  wife  her  husband,  and 
then  the  consort  inherits  a  part  of  the  right.  When 
the  possessor  is  ruined  or  does  not  pay  his  annual 
rent,  the  beklem-regt  is  not  at  once  annulled.  The 
creditors  can  cause  it  to  be  sold,  but  the  purchaser 
must  first  of  all  pay  all  outstanding  debts  to  the  pro- 
prietor." It  is  unnecessary  for  the  traveller  to  add 
that  thus  the  farmers  have  a  continuous  and  strong 
interest  in  their  improving  land,  "  secure  as  they  are 
of  the  sole  enjoyment  of  all  the  ameliorations  which 
they  may  introduce  into  the  cultivation ;  of  not  hav- 
ing, like  ordinary  tenants,  to  pay  a  rent  which  grows 
higher  and  higher  in  proportion  as  they  succeed  in 
increasing  the  fertility  of  the  land.  They  undertake 
the  boldest  enterprises,  introduce  innovations  and 
carry  out  the  costliest  experiments.  The  legitimate 
recompense  of  their  labor  is  the  entire  and  certain 
profit  that  accrues  from  that  labor."  And  these 
peasants  "  practise  agriculture,  not  blindly  and  as  if 


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THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE.        I  59 

it  were  to  be  contemned,  but  as  a  noble  occupation 
which  demands  the  exercise  of  the  noblest  faculties 
of  intelligence  and  procures  for  those  that  follow  it 
fortune,  social  importance  and  public  respect."^ 

The  working  of  peasant  proprietary  in  France  is 
most  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  relation  of  the  agri- 
cultural class  to  the  public  debt  of  that  country.  In 
1798  the  number  of  holders  of  rente  was  24,791  ;  in 
i860  this  number  had  increased  to  1,073,381  ;  in 
1876  it  had  risen  to  3,473,475;  in  1879  it  reached 
4,380,933.  The  annual  interest  which  these  holders 
of  the  national  obligation  draw  on  their  investment 
is  748,404,97 1  francs.  "  It  will  be  seen  that  the  na- 
tional debt  in  recent  years  has  been  steadily  under- 
going the  process  of  complete  subdivision  among 
the  population  of  France,  the  7iumber  of  pttblic  fund- 
holders  having  come  to  approach  that  of  the  freeholders 
of  the  soiiy  ^  More  than  half  the  people  of  France 
live  by  agriculture.  Over  five  millions  of  the  farms 
are  under  six  acres.  There  are  only  five  hundred 
thousand  farms  averaging  sixty  acres,  and  fifty  thou- 
sand averaging  six  hundred  acres.  **  The  contrast 
between  the  land  system  of  France  and  England," 
Mr.  Cliff  Leslie  may  well  assert,  "  two  neighboring 
countries  at  the  head  of  civilization,  may  without 
exaggeration  be  called  the  most  extraordinary  spec- 
tacle which  European  society  offers  for  study  to  po- 

*  Holland  and  its  People,  by  Edmondo  de  Amicis,  page  382  ei 
seq. 

'  Statesman'' s  Yearbook,  1880,  p.  66. 


l6o       THE  PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE. 

litical  and  social  philosophy."^  "Of  the  soil  of 
England  we  may  say  that  nobody  knows  who  own 
it,"^  but  the  nominal  owners  do  not  exceed  thirty 
thousand  persons.  Like  so  many  more  Englishmen 
who  abhor  confiscation  when  the  results  are  not  to 
their  liking,  Mr.  Leslie  finds  satisfaction  in  affirming 
that,  contrary  to  prevalent  belief,  peasant  proprietary 
in  France  did  not  originate  in  the  confiscation  of  the 
French  Revolution.  That  a  large  proportion  of  the 
small  farms  did,  however,  get  into  the  hands  of 
working  proprietors  through  those  confiscations  is 
undeniable.  Confiscation  in  France  was  done  in 
behalf  of  tenants ;  confiscation  in  Ireland  by  Eng- 
land was  done  in  behalf  of  landlords.  The  contrast 
is  again  an  "  extraordinary  spectacle."  England  is 
the  only  government  which  in  modern  times,  after 
the  decay  of  feudalism,  confiscated  land  for  land- 
lords. Confiscation  has  taken  place  in  other  coun- 
tries, but  it  has  generally  been  for  tenants.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  Mr.  Leslie  finds  peasants  buying 
small  farms  in  France.  It  was  not  the  lack  of  land- 
ed property,  he  goes  on  to  say,  which,  two  hundred 
years  later,  left  the  peasantry  in  destitution  "and 
drove  them  to  furious  vengeance."  What  was  it, 
then  ?  "  The  deprivation  of  its  use  by  atrocious 
misgovernment  and  the  confiscation  of  its  fruits  by 

*  Systems  of  Land  Tenure  in  Various  Countries^  p.  336.    (Cobden 
Gi^b  Essays.) 

The  Land  Question^  with  Particular  Reference  to  England  and 
Scotland,  by  John  Macdonncll  (London:  Macmillan  &  Co.),  p.  24. 


THE  PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE.       l6l 

merciless  taxation  and  feudal  oppression."  The  ver- 
dict of  the  world  on  the  French  Revolution  does  not 
lack  a  sense  of  horror ;  but  if  there  be  any  of  its 
consequences  which  humanity  instinctively  and  un- 
qualifiedly approves,  it  is  the  wresting  of  the  land 
by  the  people  and  its  distribution  among  the  people. 
Mr.  Leslie  describes  the  cause  of  the  insurrection 
of  the  peasantry  correctly.  They  had  land,  indeed, 
but  it  did  not  keep  them  from  destitution  while  their 
noble  masters  dazzled  Europe  with  their  splendid 
luxury.  The  peasantry  were  deprived  of  the  ben- 
efits of  the  land  by  "atrocious  misgovernment." 
They  too  suffered  confiscation  of  the  fruits  alike  of 
the  land  and  of  their  labor.  They  finally  arose  and 
wreakecf  a  "furious  vengeance;"  and  to-day  they 
present  to  the  world  an  example  of  thrift,  industry^ 
patriotism  and  contentment  which  the  appreciative 
pen  of  this  broad-minded  Englishman  effectively  pre- 
sents. Is  he  willing  to  concede  that  the  historian  of 
the  next  century  shall  tell  in  the  same  spirit  the  fate 
of  the  Irish  peasant  ?  Let  us  hope  that  there  will 
be  no  "  furious  vengeance  "  to  describe,  but  that  the 
wrongs  of  the  peasant — wrongs  which  in  France 
were  wiped  out  by  revolution — shall  be  righted  in 
a  peaceful  and  legal  way. 

"The  subdivision  of  the  French  soil,"  says  Mr. 
Leslie,  "  w^hich  has  been  the  subject  of  sincere  regret 
and  pity  on  the  part  of  many  eminent  English  writers 
and  speakers,  as  well  as  of  much  ignorant  contempt 
on  the  part  of  prejudiced  politicians,  is  really  both  a 


l62       THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE. 

cause  and  an  effect  of  the  increased  wealth  of  every 
part  of  the  population — the  seller  and  buyer  of  land, 
the  land-owner,  the  farmer  and  laborer,  the  country 
and  the  town."  But  all  the  people  in  France  who 
live  by  agriculture  are  not  land-owners;  there  are 
tenant-farmers  there.  What  are  the  relations  be- 
tween them  and  the  landlords  ?  Mr.  Leslie  answers 
fully  and  briefly.  There  are  two  kinds  of  tenure — 
by  lease  for  a  money-rent  and  by  metayage,  accord- 
ing to  which  the  proprietor  and  the  tenant  work  the 
farm  in  partnership,  each  furnishing  a  proportion  of 
the  capital  and  dividing  the  produce.  The  contract 
for  metayage  is  really  a  lease,  and  usually  extends 
over  a  term  of  years.  "  The  truth  is,"  writes  Mr. 
Leslie,  "the  system  of  short  tenures  common  through- 
out most  of  Western  Europe  has  a  common  barbar- 
ous origin.  It  belongs  to  a  state  of  agriculture  which 
took  no  thought  of  a  distant  future  and  involved  no 
lengthened  outlay,  and  which  gave  the  land  frequent 
rest  in  fallow ;  and  it  belongs  to  a  state  of  commerce 
in  which  sales  of  land  were  rare,  changes  of  propri- 
etorship equally  so,  and  ideas  of  making  the  most 
of  landed  property  commercially  non-existent.  It 
is  right  to  observe,  however,  that  in  many  parts  of 
France,  although  the  stated  period  of  tenure  is  com- 
monly short,  the  farm  really  remains  commonly  with 
the  same  family  from  father  to  son,  from  generation 
to  generation,  provided  only  the  rent  is  paid."  The 
tenant  is  never  in  apprehension  of  eviction.  On  the 
contrary,  so  fortunate  is  he  in  the  fruits  of  his  toil 


THE  PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE.        1 63 

that  he  does  not  like  to  encumber  himself  with  a 
long  lease,  because  he  intends  to  buy  land  and  be- 
come himself  a  proprietor.  "Again,  although  no 
legal  customs  of  tenure  for  unexhausted  improve- 
ments remain  in  France,  where  the  Code  has  swept 
away  all  customary  laws,  yet  compensation  for  some 
unexhausted  improvements  exists  under  the  Code. 
...  It  is  fortunate  for  France  not  only  that  peasant 
proprietorship  already  exists  on  a  great  scale,  but 
that  the  tendency  of  the  economic  progress  of  the 
country,  as  already  shown,  is  to  substitute,  more  and 
more,  cultivation  by  peasant  proprietors  for  cultiva- 
tion by  tenants,  and  to  give,  more  and  more,  to  those 
who  remain  tenants  or  laborers  the  position  and  sen- 
timents of  proprietors."  Why  would  not  this  be 
fortunate  for  Ireland  and  England  ?  "  France,"  says 
Mr.  Leslie  in  conclusion,  "  has  had  only  three-quar- 
ters of  a  century  of  anything  like  liberty,  and  less 
than  half  a  century  of  tranquillity  and  industrial 
life."  He  wrote  just  on  the  eve  of  the  Franco- 
Prussian  war.  Yet  he  deems  the  French  land  sys- 
tem not  only  "the  salvation  of  the  country  itself, 
but  one  of  the  principal  securities  for  the  tranquillity 
and  economic  progress  of  Europe." 

The  result  of  the  brief  and  disastrous  conflict  into 
which  the  country  was  plunged  by  the  ambition  and 
folly  of  the  last  of  the  emperors  furnishes  a  remark- 
able emphasis  for  this  conclusion.  It  was  her  peas- 
ant proprietors  and  tenant-farmers  who  subscribed 
with  such  cheerful  alacrity  so  great  a  proportion  of 


164       THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE. 

the  immense  forfeit  France  had  to  pay  for  the  fatal 
imperial  venture ;  it  is  they  who  constitute  to-day 
the  conservatism  and  strength  of  the  republic.  It  is 
her  free  land  that  makes  and  will  keep  France  free ; 
and  it  is  the  well-recompensed,  the  industrious  and 
the  thrifty  tillers  of  the  soil  that  will  hold  back  the 
politicians  at  the  head  of  the  government  from  rush- 
ing into  foreign  wars  or  precipitating  either  mon- 
archy or  anarchy  at  home.  France  is  stable  be- 
cause her  land  belongs  to  those  who  live  by  it.  For 
that  reason  is  she  rich,  prosperous,  contented;  for 
that  reason  is  she  to-day  one  of  the  preservers  of 
the  peace  of  Europe  and  the  most  efficient  promoter 
of  all  industries,  all  arts,  fine  and  industrial,  and  all 
economic  progress. 

Let  us  go  to  Prussia.  "A  people,"  says  John 
Macdonnell,  "  are  what  their  land  system  makes 
them ;  the  soil  that  they  till  is  stronger  than  they ; 
and  the  essence  of  their  history  records  the  changes 
in  the  ownership  of  their  land.  Frugal  and  indus- 
trious or  unfixed  and  unstable  in  their  ways  they  are 
according  to  the  nature  of  their  tenure  of  land.  .  .  . 
Disappointingly  feeble  as  is  most  political  machinery 
to  alter  men  for  better  or  for  worse,  ...  a  states- 
man has  one  instrument  which  pierces  through  all 
obstacles  and  uses  men  as  clay :  that  instrument  is 
legislation  affecting  land.  A  Stein  or  a  Hardenberg 
who  knows  how  to  use  it  may  shape  the  morals  and 
destiny  of  a  people."^ 

^  The  Land  Question,  pp.  4,  5. 


THE   PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE.       1 65 

Napoleon  destroyed  the  German  empire  in  1 803  ; 
the  edict  of  emancipation  in  1807  laid  anew  its  per- 
manent foundations.  That  edict  freed  the  peasant 
and  the  land.  Two  years  later  the  superstructure 
was  begun.  The  law  of  181 1  made  the  peasant  a 
proprietor ;  then  the  empire  became  invincible.  The 
German  armies  that  Napoleon  put  to  rout  were  serfs 
who  had  nothing  to  fight  for  but  their  serfdom ;  the 
soldier  of  the  new  German  empire  is  a  freeman  who 
has  his  land  and  his  home  and  his  family  to  fight  for. 

To  whom  the  credit  of  the  creation  of  peasant 
proprietary  in  Prussia  belongs  is  not  historically 
clear.  It  should  be  divided  among  the  king  and 
the  ministers  by  whom  he  was  surrounded  at  that 
period.  None  of  them  seemed  to  fully  comprehend 
the  scope  or  the  consequences  of  the  momentous 
step.  Even  Stein  wrote  that  it  was  reserved  for 
Hardenberg  to  take  the  advice  of  a  dreamer  who 
died  in  a  madhouse,  and  transform  the  peasants  into 
landlords;^  but  Stein  himself  procured  the  signature 
of  the  king  to  the  edict  and  promulgated  it.  The 
law  of  181 1,  by  which  the  peasant  was  made  the  ac- 
tual proprietor  and  the  landlord  was  indemnified  by 
the  state  for  his  loss,  was  Hardenberg's.  But  when 
its  operation  became  clear  to  Stein  he  not  only 
adopted  it,  but  provided  for  its  universal  application ; 
and  when,  after  the  preliminaries  were  completed, 
the  law  received  the  royal  assent,  well  might  a  com- 

*  The  Life  and  Times  of  Stein ;  or,  Germany  and  Prussia  in  the 
Napoleonic  Age,  by  J.  R.  Seeley,  vol.  i.,  p.  287. 


l66       THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE. 

Inentator  of  the  time  ^  declare  that  there  had  come 
"the  dawn  of  a  golden  day  upon  economic  dark- 
ness, and  a  new  creation  rising  out  of  the  ruins  of 
destructive  war ;  never  had  any  public  measure  been 
taken  which  had  more  happily  or  more  beneficially 
united  the  private  happiness  of  many  families  with 
the  interest  of  the  state." 

To-day  half  the  people  of  Prussia  are  engaged  in 
agriculture  under  conditions  which  insure  the  per- 
manence of  the  state  more  effectually  than  all  the 
enactments  of  Bismarck.  The  first  Napoleon  easily 
threw  serfs  into  consternation;  the  last  Napoleon 
found  a  phalanx  of  free  farmer-soldiers  a  wall  which 
he  could  not  shatter,  and  whose  stones  flew  upon 
him  for  his  destruction.  The  French  army  which 
the  last  Napoleon  hastily  precipitated  into  a  war 
which  the  French  nation  did  not  solicit  was  compos- 
ed chiefly  of  the  undisciplined  crowds  of  the  cities ; 
the  huge  German  army  was  drawn  chiefly  from  the 
bone  and  muscle  of  the  German  land.  The  men 
had  their  farms  and  their  homes  to  return  to  when 
the  conflict  was  over.  They  had  not  sought  the 
war,  either;  but,  since  it  was  thrust  upon  them,  they 
fought  like  men  who  wanted  it  quickly  ended,  so 
that  they  might  return  to  their  homes  and  their 
fields.  The  statement  that  the  hurriedly-augmented 
French  army,  whose  valor  was  so  superior  to  their 
discipline  and  their  generalship,  was  largely  a  col- 
lection of  city  multitudes  is  amply  warranted  by  the 
^  Stagemann,  quoted  by  Seeley,  vol.  i.,  p.  462. 


THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE.       1 6/ 

time  in  which  it  was  gotten  together  and  by  the 
statistics  showing  the  transformation  of  the  rural 
into  an  urban  population  in  the  ten  preceding  years. 
Their  valor  could  have  been  no  greater  had  every 
man  been  a  veteran,  but  they  fought  with  dash,  not 
with  discipline;  with  the  enthusiasm  of  national 
glory,  not  with  the  steadiness  and  endurance  of 
those  who  have  homes  and  farms  awaiting  them, 
and  whose  commanders  know  the  art  of  war  as  well 
as  they  the  art  of  husbandry.  In  the  American  re- 
bellion whole  regiments,  composed,  probably,  of 
men  who  had  never  smelled  gunpowder,  fought  with 
astonishing  bravery  and  strength.  What  was  the 
substitute  for  discipline  ?  The  home  to  which  they 
hoped  to  return ;  the  citizenship  which  protected  the 
home,  and  which  was  involved  in  the  conflict.  Give 
a  man  the  right  and  the  power  to  be  a  proprietor — 
to  acquire  and  to  hold  property — and  he  must  be  the 
best  of  soldiers,  because  he  is  defending  his  own. 
Make  a  soldier  of  the  man  who  cannot  own  and 
cannot  acquire  property,  and  he  is  without  the  high- 
est incentive  to  bravery.  Had  the  French  army  of 
ten  years  ago  been  drawn  from  the  farmers  of  France 
and  subjected  to  the  same  drill  which  the  German 
troops  carried  to  the  field,  with  equal  generalship, 
shall  it  be  prudently  said  that  the  result  would  have 
been  precisely  the  same?  But  the  supreme  virtue 
of  the  possession  of  property  is  not  that  it  makes  a 
man  a  soldier :  it  is  that  it  makes  him  a  man  of 
peace.     Property  is  the  police  of  the  world ;  it  is  the 


l68        THE  PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE, 

presenter  of  the  world's  peace.  Is  it  not  strange 
that  peasant  proprietary  has  not  occurred  to  EngHsh 
statesmanship  as  the  permanent  pacifier  of  Ireland  ? 

Shall  we  go  to  Russia?  In  the  cold,  slow  and 
barbarous  North,  England  should  not  find  much  to 
learn.  Yet  she  is  perplexed  with  the  problem  how 
to  make  five  millions  of  her  subjects  owners  of  twen- 
ty million  acres  of  the  land  on  which  tiiey  live.  The 
czar,  with  no  constitution  to  restrain  him,  with  no 
law  but  his  own  will,  with  little  statesmanship — for 
what  is  statesmanship  but  the  antithesis  of  despot- 
ism ? — a  Russian  czar  found  a  way  to  take  an  area 
equal  to  one-seventh  of  the  habitable  globe,  and  so 
transform  eight  times  the  population  of  Ireland  that 
they  ceased  to  be  serfs  and  could  become  pro- 
prietors. Can  the  Irish  problem  become  insoluble 
in  the  light  of  Russian  emancipation  and  Russian 
peasant  proprietary  ?  Twenty  per  cent,  of  the  entire 
cultivable  area  of  Russia  is  owned  and  tilled  by 
peasant  proprietors.  Does  any  thoughtful  reader 
of  history  need  to  be  told  that  the  emperor  to  whom 
that  humane  and  redeeming  act  is  due  thereby  saved 
his  throne,  postponed  revolution — in  a  country  with- 
out a  constitution  it  must  eventually  come — and  at- 
tached the  army  of  peasants  so  strongly  to  his  per- 
son that  they  are  to-day  his  preservers  and  the  pro- 
tection of  property  and  Hfe  in  the  empire  ? 

Nor  did  the  emperor  create  peasant  proprietary 
by  wholesale  confiscation :  the  owners  of  the  serfs 
were  compensated  for  their  land  on  a  scale  of  pay- 


THE  PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE.       1 69 

ment  by  which  the  previous  labor  of  the  serf  was 
estimated  at  a  yearly  rental  of  six  per  cent.  Of  the 
sum  required  to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  the 
edict  the  peasant  was  required  to  pay  twenty  per 
cent. ;  the  government  advanced  the  balance,  secur- 
ing itself  at  intervals  extending  over  forty-nine  years. 
All  these  arrangements  were  completed  in  1865  ; 
from  that  time  serfdom  entirely  ceased  in  Russia, 
and  the  progress  of  peasant  proprietary  has  been 
uninterrupted.  Said  the  ernperor  Nicholas  to  the 
marshals  of  the  noblesse  in  1856:  "It  is  better  to 
abolish  serfage  from  above  than  to  await  the  time 
when  it  will  begin  to  abolish  itself  from  below."  ^ 
Catholic  emancipation  was  not  granted  from  above 
until  Wellington  told  the  king  that  it  would  be 
snatched  from  below;  the  Irish  Church  was  not 
abolished  from  above  until  Gladstone  saw  that  the 
foundations  were  in  imminent  danger.  Wellington 
told  the  king  he  must  choose  between  emancipation 
and  insurrection ;  Gladstone  has  publicly  avowed 
that  the  much-derided  Fenian  made  the  disestablish- 
ment a  political  necessity.  In  Russia,  then,  a  czar 
allows  reforms  from,  above  in  order  to  take  the 
credit  to  the  state  for  doing  voluntarily  what  it 
might  have  to  do  under  compulsion ;  the  English 
government  allows  no  reforms  from  above  except 
under  stress  of  compulsion  from  below — at  least,  in 
Ireland. 

Certainly  at  least  in  Ireland ;  for  let  us  turn  to 

'  Russia,  by  D.  Mackenzie  Wallace,  p.  485. 


I/O        TJIE   PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE. 

India.  What  is  the  story  of  British  legislation  there 
concerning  land  ? 

The  area  of  British  India  is  eight  hundred  and 
ninety-nine  thousand  three  hundred  and  forty-one 
square  miles ;  the  population  is  one  hundred  and 
ninety-one  million  ninety-six  thousand  six  hundred 
and  three.  The  government  claims  the  land  as  its 
own,  and  has  regularly  drawn  from  it  a  revenue 
largely  in  excess  of  that  from  salt  and  opium  to- 
gether: for  ten  years  past  it  has  averaged  twenty 
million  pounds.  Before  the  mutiny  the  East  India 
Company  was  so  thrifty  a  landlord  that  it  drew  one- 
half  its  total  receipts  from  the  land.  While  the  im- 
perial legislation  concerning  land  in  India  was  not 
uniform  in  all  the  provinces,  much  being  left  to  the 
apparent  exigences  of  situation  and  time,  certain 
principles,  it  is  asserted,  are  found  to  be  generally 
present.  An  acknowledged  deference  has  been  shown 
to  claims  of  clear  title  of  native  origin ;  the  greatest 
respect  has  been  shown  for  the  rights  of  working 
farmers;  the  tenants  have  been  carefully  protected 
against  the  oppression  of  their  landlords.  The  state, 
as  chief  landlord  in  India,  has  held  the  land,  it  is 
alleged,  not  as  its  absolute  property,  but  as  a  posses- 
sion in  partnership  with  the  tenant,  whose  right  to 
live  off  it  was  the  first  of  all  rights. 

The  pen  of  the  historian  will  yet  point  to  the  fact, 
already  sufficiently  apparent,  that  just  in  proportion 
as  the  imperial  government  dealt  justly  with  the 
Indian  tenant  the  government   of  the  empire  was 


THE   PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE.        17I 

submitted  to,  and  that  the  enormous  expenses  which 
the  treasury  has  had  to  meet  for  the  retention  of  the 
Indian  domain  would  have  been  considerably  lessened 
had  the  rights  of  tenants  been  more  sacredly  and 
more  judiciously  considered. 

If  we  should  take  the  assertions  of  the  govern- 
ment commissioner,  Sir  George  Campbell,  the  land 
legislation  for  India  has  been  in  some  provinces 
ideally  perfect.  How  strange,  then,  that  famines  are 
occurring  there  with  dreadful  frequency !  not  famines 
of  food — for  the  land  continues  to  pay  enormous 
profits  on  its  products — but  famines  of  money.  The 
middleman  and  the  state  take  everything  the  land 
can  be  induced  to  yield,  and  the  peasant  has  neither 
produce  nor  money  left. 

Speaking  of  the  remarkable  liberality  of  the  em- 
pire in  settling  disputes  of  title,  Sir  George  Campbell 
says :  **  Renouncing  the  ordinary  de  facto  powers  of 
native  princes,  we  have  recognized  as  valid  and  bind- 
ing all  grants  made  by  any  authority  which  was  at 
the  time  competent  to  make  them,  and  have  given 
the  grantees  complete  and  certain  tenure,  instead  of 
the  precarious  tenure  at  the  pleasure  of  the  prince  at 
the  time  being."  Insecurity  of  tenure  is  obnoxious, 
it  will  be  observed,  in  India.  "  All  incomplete  ten- 
ures having  some  show  of  long  possession  or  other 
equitable  claim  we  have  treated  very  tenderly,  either 
maintaining  them  or  giving  them  terms  of  very  easy 
compromise."  There  are  tenures  of  long  possession 
in  Ireland  in  which  there  is  the  claim  of  bog  made 


1/2       THE   PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE. 

into  meadow,  of  mountain  turned  into  pasture,  by 
the  industry  of  the  tenant ;  yet  the  landlord  may 
eject  the  man  who  did  it  all,  and  there  was  no  law  to 
compel  him  to  take  into  account  any  claim  whatever 
upon  him  or  his  property.  But  the  rights  of  the 
Mohammedan  were  most  "tenderly  treated,"  lest 
any  injustice  should  be  done  him.  "We  have  not 
only  professed  this  indulgent  treatment,  but  we  have 
embodied  these  lenient  rules  in  public  laws,  and  have 
opened  the  courts  of  justice  to  all  who  wish  to  appeal 
to  them  from  the  decisions  of  the  executive  officers." 
All  lands  to  which  titles  were  thus  procured  are 
revenue-free  for  ever. 

But  now  as  to  lands  held  subject  to  revenue,  lands 
the  title  of  which  resides  in  the  state.  Is  it  absolute 
title,  or  is  it  a  partnership  with  the  tenant  who  oc- 
cupies and  tills,  and  with  the  middleman  who  is  a 
kind  of  political  support  of  the  state  and  lives  off 
the  land  and  the  working  tenant  ? 

There  were  land  laws  and  customs  of  tenure  in 
India  before  the  British  conquered  the  country.  In 
those  laws  and  customs  nearly  everything  that  the 
Irish  tenant  is  begging  to-day  were  to  be  found. 
There  was  compensation  for  improvements;  there 
was  practically  fixity  of  tenure,  so  long  as  the  rent 
was  paid. 

Bengal  was  the  first  province  in  which  the  British 
applied  reform.  Sir  George  Campbell  points  out  that 
the  government  recognized  the  tenant  as  entitled  to 
fixity  of  tenure  while  he  paid  his  rent,  and  as  entitled 


THE   PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE.        1/3 

to  protection  against  an  increase  of  rent  at  the  caprice 
of  the  middlemen,  from  whom  the  government  collected 
the  land  revenue,  and  who  held  a  curious  position  be- 
tween the  tenant  and  the  state.  The  law  became  set- 
tled that  every  working  tenant  who  was  in  possession 
at  least  twelve  years  at  uniform  rent  was  entitled  to 
his  holding  for  ever  at  that  rent.  Sir  George  Camp- 
bell is  of  opinion  that  these  arrangements  were  just, 
and  that  the  subsequent  ground  for  complaint  is  to 
be  found  in  the  failure  properly  to  carry  them  out. 
But  let  us  get  at  them  more  closely.  The  tenant- 
farmer  is  the  ryot ;  the  landlord  from  whom  he  leased 
was  the  zemeendar.  The  state  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  ryot  except  to  protect  him  against  the 
zemeendar.  The  latter  was  the  nominal  landlord : 
he  executed  the  lease;  he  collected  the  rent  from 
the  ryot ;  but  the  state  claimed  to  divide  with  both 
him  and  the  ryot  the  real  ownership  of  the  land  and 
its  produce.  The  share  which  the  state  claimed  was 
ten-elevenths  of  what  the  zemeendar  got  from  the 
ryot.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  zemeendars  were 
soon  engaged  in  the  general  enterprise  of  extracting 
almost  eleven-elevenths  of  all  the  ryot  could  get  out 
of  the  land  ?  The  historian  of  land  tenure  in  India 
admits  "  English  ideas  of  the  rights  of  a  landlord 
and  of  the  advantage  of  non-interference  began  to 
prevail."  "It  has  been  epigrammatically  said,"  re- 
ports Campbell,  "that  Lord  Cornwallis  designed  to 
make  English  landlords  in  Bengal,  and  only  suc- 
ceeded in  making  Irish  landlords." 
11 


1/4       ^/^^  PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE. 

In  the  north-west  provinces  the  early  legislation 
differed  somewhat  from  that  in  Bengal,  but  in  1822 
the  regulation  was  adopted  which  is  the  basis  of  all 
subsequent  land  law  in  Northern  India.  Occupants 
were  to  have  long  leases  with  the  right  of  renewal 
at  revaluation,  and  these  rights  were  to  be  transfer- 
able— a  recognition  of  Ulster  tenant  right  in  India, 
although  it  was  not  recognized  as  law  in  Ireland. 
The  ryots  were  to  be  secure  in  their  holdings 
so  long  as  they  paid  their  rent.  Ryots  who  had 
been  twelve  years  in  occupancy  were  deemed  to 
have  acquired  the  right  permanently,  and  eviction 
was  never  thought  of  by  any  one.  If  the  zemeen- 
dar  desired  to  raise  the  rent,  he  had  to  go  before  a 
court,  prove  that  the  permanent  value  had  been  in- 
creased in  some  way  other  than  by  the  exertion  of 
the  tenant,  and  thus  obtain  the  power  to  increase 
the  rent.  "  The  course  of  procedure  was,  however, 
difficult ;  the  right  hardly  known."  Occupancy 
rents  continued  unvaried  until  the  government  in- 
troduced a  new  rent  law.  But  even  this  did  not 
secure  peace.  The  principles  were  correct  enough 
so  far  as  they  went.  Why  should  mutiny  arise  ?  It 
was  found  that  the  principle  was  better  than  the  prac- 
tice. It  "  was  found  that  the  position  of  the  ryots 
had  not  been  sufficiently  defined,"  discreetly  remarks 
Mr.  Campbell. 

The  Punjab  did  not  become  British  territory  until 
1849.  In  settling  the  land  question  there  the  same 
principles  were  ostentatiously  adopted.     The  tenants 


3: 
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GO 


THE  PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE.        1 7/ 

were  carefully  protected.  The  legislation  of  1859 
confers  upon  ryots  for  ever  their  holdings  at  an  un- 
changeable rent.  If  any  increase  is  to  be  allowed 
the  zemeendar  in  the  rent,  he  can  get  it  only  after 
demonstrating  in  court  that  the  value  of  the  hold- 
ing has  been  permanently  improved  without  expense 
to  or  by  the  labor  of  the  ryot.  If  a  ryot  desires  to 
surrender  a  lease,  he  may  carry  away  with  him 
everything  he  placed  on  the  land  which  is  not  sunk 
in  the  soil.  When  the  thirty  years'  settlement  of 
the  north-western  provinces  expired  a  new  settlement 
took  place,  and  the  government  reduced  its  propor- 
tion of  the  rent.  Instead  of  two-thirds,  it  was  con- 
tent with  one-half. 

In  Oude,  after  the  mutiny,  a  different  course  was 
tried.  The  ryot  was  no  longer  to  be  regarded  as 
having  any  rights  worthy  of  consideration.  The 
government  was  going  to  be  a  strong  one ;  it  should 
be  a  government  of  landlords.  So  all  the  land  was 
confiscated,  and  was  assigned  again  according  to  the 
plan  followed  by  Elizabeth  in  Ireland.  A  judicial 
decision  was  obtained  dissipating  the  principles  which 
the  government  had  professed  to  foUoAv  in  all  pre- 
vious legislation.  After  much  discussion  it  was  de- 
termined to  protect  a  few  families  who  had  hereditary 
claims  or  whose  loyalty  was  above  suspicion.  All 
other  tenants  were  reduced  to  tenancies-at-will,  and 
the  system  of  rack-reiits  went  speedily  into  opera- 
tion. 

Campbell  writes  :  "Already  we  hear  of  the  service 


I/S        THE  PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE. 

of  notices  of  ejectment  in  large  numbers,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  of  combinations  of  the  tenants  to 
resist  these  proceedings."  And  the  government  lent 
money  to  the  landlords,  not  to  improv^e  their  estates, 
but  to  stave  off  their  creditors. 

In  the  central  provinces  the  r>^ot  rights  were  re- 
spected. 

Summing  up  all  the  legislation  affecting  the  ten- 
ure of  land  in  India  by  Great  Britain,  Sir  George 
Campbell  thus  describes  its  present  status : 

Oude:  Great  zemeendars,  almost  complete  own- 
ers, with  few  subordinate  rights. 

North-west  provinces  :  Moderate  proprietors  ;  old 
ryots  have  also  a  measure  of  fixity  of  tenure  at  a 
fair  rent. 

Bengal :  Great  zemeendars  whose  rights  are  lim- 
ited. Numerous  subproprietors  of  several  grades 
under  them.  Ancient  ryots  who  have  both  fixity  of 
tenure  and  fixity  of  rent.  Other  old  ryots  who  have 
fixity  of  tenure  at  fair  rent,  variable  from  time  to 
time. 

Central  provinces :  Moderate  proprietors.  An- 
cient ryots  who  are  subproprietors  of  their  holdings 
at  rents  fixed  for  the  term  of  each  settlement.  Other 
old  ryots  who  have  fixity  of  tenure  at  fair  rent. 

Madras  and  Bombay:  The  ryots  are  complete 
masters  of  the  soil,  subject  only  to  payment  of  rev- 
enue. 

It  will  be  observed,  therefore,  that,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  single  province.  Great  Britain  has  given  to 


THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE.       179 

its  Indian  subjects  a  virtual  peasant  proprietar}^,  more 
or  less  modified,  or,  where  there  is  tenantry,  fixity  of 
tenure  and  reasonable  fixity  of  rent.  Great  Britain 
has  done  more,  therefore,  for  her  Indian  subjects  in 
half  a  century  than  she  has  done  for  her  Irish  sub- 
jects in  nearly  seven  centuries.  The  principles  which 
she  has  generally  professed  in  adjusting  land-settle- 
ments in  India  are  the  principles  which  the  Irish 
tenant  has  not  been  able  to  induce  her  legislators 
to  recognize  in  their  land  legislation  for  Ireland. 

The  state  is  the  only  landlord  in  Bombay.  There 
the  middleman  has  been  almost  entirely  dispensed  with, 
and  the  government  deals  directly  with  the  tenant. 
There,  then,  we  shall  find  the  ideal  relationship  of 
landlord  and  tenant  according  to  the  standard  of 
modern  British  statesmanship. 

"  The  survey  and  assessment  of  the  Bombay  pres- 
idency has  been  almost  completed  on  a  system  in- 
troduced and  carefully  elaborated  twenty  years  ago. 
The  whole  country  is  surveyed  and  mapped  and  the 
fields  distinguished  by  permanent  boundary-marks, 
which  it  is  penal  to  remove ;  the  soil  of  each  field  is 
classed  according  to  its  intrinsic  qualities  and  to  the 
climate;  and  the  rate  of  assessment  to  be  paid  on 
fields  of  each  class  in  each  subdivision  of  a  district 
is  fixed  on  a  careful  consideration  of  the  value  of  the 
crops  they  are  capable  of  producing,  as  affected  by 
the  proximity  to  market-towns,  canals,  railways  and 
similar  external  incidents,  but  not  by  improvements 
made  by  the  ryot  himself.     This  rate  was  probably 


l8o       THE   PEASANT-FARMER  ELSEWHERE, 

about  one-half  the  yearly  value  of  the  land  when 
fixed,  but,  owing  to  the  general  improvement  of  the 
country,  it  is  not  more  than  from  a  fourth  to  an  eighth 
in  the  districts  which  have  not  been  settled  quite  re- 
cently. The  measurement  and  classification  of  the 
soil  are  made  once  for  all ;  but  the  rate  of  assessment 
is  open  to  revision  at  the  end  of  every  thirty  years, 
in  order  that  the  ryot,  on  the  one  hand,  may  have  the 
certainty  of  the  long  period  as  an  inducement  to  lay 
out  capital,  and  the  state,  on  the  other,  may  secure 
that  participation  in  the  advantages  accruing  from 
the  general  progress  of  society  to  which  its  joint- 
proprietorship  in  the  land  entitles  it.  In  the  thirty 
years'  revision,  moreover,  only  public  improvements 
and  a  general  change  of  prices,  but  not  improvements 
effected  by  the  ryots  themselves,  are  considered  as 
grounds  for  enhancing  the  assessment.  The  ryot's 
tenure  is  permanent,  provided  he  pays  the  assess- 
ment." ^ 

In  Bombay,  therefore,  where  the  English  govern- 
ment is  sole  and  actual  landlord,  we  find,  first,  fixity 
of  tenure ;  second,  no  increase  in  rent  except  once 
every  thirty  years,  and  then  after  a  fair  valuation,  in 
which  the  improvements  effected  by  the  tenant  are 
not  made  the  cause  of  increasing  his  rent ;  third,  the 
state  makes  all  the  improvements  of  a  permanent 
kind  at  its  own  expense.  The  rent  is  fixed  on  a 
fair  valuation  of  the  producing-power  of  the  farm 
and  the  relative  cost  of  getting  the  crop  to  market 

*  Statesman^ 5  Yearbook,  1880,  p.  681. 


THE  PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE.       l8l 

Such  is  land  law  under  the  English  government 
in  Bombay.  What  has  been  land  law  under  the 
Irish  landlord,  protected  by  the  English  government 
in  Ireland?  No  security  of  tenure;  perpetual  notice 
to  quit.  No  fixity  of  rent ;  perpetual  liabihty  to  in- 
crease. No  inducement  to  improve  the  land ;  every 
inducement  not  to  improve  it.  No  assurance  that  if 
the  tenant  spends  money  and  labor  in  improving  the 
land,  he  will  not  be  compelled  to  pay  more  rent  on 
account  of  the  improvement  effected  by  himself;  on 
the  contrary,  a  moral  certainty  that  the  rent  will  be 
increased  the  moment  the  improvements  are  discov- 
ered. In  India  the  English  government  recognizes 
the  tiller  of  the  soil  as  in  partnership  with  the  lord 
of  the  soil ;  in  Ireland  the  law  recognizes  the  tiller 
of  the  soil  as  having  no  rights  except  what  the 
lord  chooses  to  grant  him. 

Which  stands  condemned,  the  English  government 
in  Bombay  or  the  English  government  in  Ireland  ? 
Are  British  subjects  to  be  imprisoned  in  Ireland  for 
requesting  for  themselves  the  rights  of  British  sub- 
jects in  Bombay?  Or  is  it  better  to  be  an  Indian 
than  to  be  an  Irishman,  to  be  a  Mohammedan  than 
to  be  a  Christian  ? 

This  is  the  question  the  Irish  National  Land 
League  put  to  the  most  liberal  of  English  ministers, 
Mr.  Gladstone,  with  whom  is  officially  associated  that 
eminent  advocate  of  peasant  proprietary  Mr.  John 
Bright.  The  answer  was,  first,  the  arrest  of  Michael 
Davitt,  the  founder  of  the  Land  League,  a  one-armed 


1 82        THE   PEASANT-FARMER   ELSEWHERE. 

invalid ;  next,  the  arrest  of  John  Dillon ;  then  a  co- 
ercion act  giving  to  one  Englishman  in  Ireland,  Mr. 
Forster,  the  power  to  arrest  without  accusation,  and 
to  keep  in  prison  for  an  indefinite  period  without 
trial,  as  many  men  and  women  in  Ireland  as  he  may- 
choose  to  rob  of  their  liberty ;  lastly,  a  Land  Act 
whose  provision  for  peasant  proprietary  amounts 
simply  to  nothing. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

PECULIAR  FEATURES   OF  IRISH  LAND- 
LORDISM. 

THE  first  organized  effort  to  recover  the  lands 
of  Ireland  for  the  people  to  whom  they  belong 
was  begun  in  1879  when  the  Irish  National  Land 
League  was  formed.  Before  entering  upon  the 
narrative  of  that  constitutional  and  peaceful  but 
now  suppressed  organization,  it  is  necessary  to  con- 
sider the  condition  to  which  the  people  of  Ireland 
have  been  reduced  by  the  exactions  of  the  landlords, 
who  were  acting  within  English  law  and  were  pro- 
tected by  English  armies — by  armies,  for  the  con- 
stabulary of  Ireland  are  not  policemen :  they  are 
soldiers  armed  with  bayonets,  equipped  better  than 
were  the  warriors  of  Napoleon,  and  drilled  more 
thoroughly  than  were  the  English  at  Waterloo. 
There  are  fifteen  thousand  of  these  in  Ireland, 
assisting  landlords  to  oppress  five  millions  of  un- 
armed, undrilled,  hungry  and,  it  must  be  said,  meek 
people;  for  what  other  epithet  can  justly  be  applied 
to  a  nation  which  has  submitted  for  so  many  cen- 
turies to  misgovernment  without  a  parallel  even  in 

183 


184  PECULIAR   FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM 

Russia?  The  constabulary  of  Ireland,  a  landlord- 
army  in  time  of  peace,  number  more  than  half  the 
available  men  of  the  entire  standing  army  of  fifty 
millions  of  free  people. 

It  has  been  demonstrated  by  the  bloodless  logic 
of  facts  that  it  is  the  landlords  of  Ireland — who 
obtain  their  legal  rights  there  by  inheritance  from 
land-stealers  who  had  no  legal  rights— who  make 
the  famines  in  Ireland.  It  was  the  famines  which 
led  to  the  formation  of  the  first  organized  movement 
to  recover  the  lands  for  the  heirs  of  their  rightful 
owners. 

Famines  were  frequent  in  the  seventeenth  century ; 
they  were  not  unknown  in  the  eighteenth ;  and  Hely 
Hutchinson,  already  quoted,  describes  the  condition 
of  the  people  in  even  the  large  cities,  reduced  to 
street-begging  on  account  of  the  suppression  of 
Irish  trade  and  the  consequent  poverty  of  all  classes. 
Irish  famines — it  should  be  repeated  so  often  that 
the  fact  shall  be  ever-present  before  the  eyes  of  the 
American — are  not  natural  famines,  they  are  artificial 
famines ;  they  are  made,  not  by  the  Lord,  but  by 
the  landlord;  they  are  not  famines  of  food — there 
is  always  enough  of  that  in  Ireland — but  famines  of 
money  with  which  to  buy  food  from  landlords  who 
have  taken  the  fruits  of  the  soil  as  rent  for  land  to 
which  they  have  generally  no  moral  title.  It  will 
be  needless  to  go  farther  back  than  to  the  fam- 
ine of  1847  to  ascertain  precisely  what  "famine'* 
means. 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  1 8$ 

The  English  government  has  occasionally  appoint- 
ed commissions  to  inquire  into  the  condition  of  the 
people  of  Ireland,  but  it  has  rarely  acted  on  their 
advice,  which  has  usually  been  sound.  In  1845  a 
commission  reported  as  follows:  "The  agricultural 
laborer  of  Ireland  .continues  to  suffer  the  greatest 
privations  and  hardships ;  he  continues  to  depend 
upon  casual  and  precarious  employment  for  subsist- 
ance;  he  is  still  badly  housed,  badly  fed,  badly 
clothed  and  badly  paid  for  his  labor.  .  .  .  We  can- 
not forbear  expressing  our  strong  sense  of  the  patient 
endurance  which  the  laboring  classes  have  generally 
exhibited  under  suffering  greater,  we  believe,  than 
the  people  of  any  other  country  in  Europe  have  to 
sustain."     There  was  no  famine  then. 

Of  the  small  farmers  the  report  said :  "  It  would 
be  impossible  to  describe  adequately  the  privations 
which  they  and  their  families  almost  habitually  and 
patiently  endure.  It  will  be  seen  in  the  evidence 
that  in  many  districts  their  only  food  is  the  potato, 
their  only  beverage  water ;  that  their  cabins  are  sel- 
dom a  protection  against  the  weather ;  that  a  bed  or 
a  blanket  is  a  rare  luxury;  and  that  nearly  in  all 
their  pig  and  their  manure- heap  constitute  their  only 
property."  That  was  in  1845,  when  there  was  no 
famine. 

The  landlords  continued  to  extort  everything  that 
the  land  and  all  the  labor  on  it  produced.  The  little 
farmers  sold  their  crops  to  pay  the  rent  of  their 
holdings,  but  they  still  had  potatoes  and  water  on 


1 86  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

which  to  feed  themselves  and  their  families.  The 
next  year  the  potato  blight  appeared.  Then  came 
famine — not  of  food,  but  of  money  with  which  to  buy 
it.  Let  those  who  saw  enacted  the  scenes  of  the  next 
two  years  describe  them. 

The  first  witness  is  John  Mitchel :  "  There  is  no 
need  to  recount  how  the  assistant-barristers  and 
sheriffs,  aided  by  the  police,  tore  down  the  roof-trees 
and  ploughed  up  the  hearths  of  village  after  village ; 
how  the  farmers  and  their  wives  and  little  ones  in 
wild  dismay  trooped  along  the  highways;  how  in 
some  hamlets  by  the  seaside,  most  of  the  inhabitants 
being  already  dead,  an  adventurous  traveller  would 
come  upon  some  family  eating  a  famished  ass ;  how 
maniac  mothers  stowed  away  their  dead  children  to 
be  devoured  at  midnight;  how  Mr.  Darcy  of  Clifden 
describes  a  humane  gentleman  going  to  a  village  near 
that  place  with  some  crackers  and  standing  at  the 
door  of  the  house,  *  and  when  he  threw  the  crackers 
to  the  children  (for  he  was  afraid  to  enter)  the  mother 
attempted  to  take  them  from  them ;'  how  husband 
and  wife  fought  like  wolves  for  the  last  morsel  of 
food  in  the  house ;  how  families,  when  all  was  eaten 
and  no  hope  left,  took  their  last  look  at  the  sun,  built 
up  their  cottage  doors  that  none  might  see  them  die 
or  hear  their  groans,  and  were  found  weeks  afterward 
skeletons  on  their  own  hearth ;  how  the  *  law '  was 
vindicated  all  this  while ;  how  the  arms  bills  were 
diligently  put  in  force  and  many  examples  were 
made;  how  starving  wretches  were  transported  for 


PECULIAR  FEATURES   OF  LANDLORDISM.  1 8/ 

stealing  vegetables  at  night;  how  overworked  cor- 
oners declared  they  would  hold  no  more  inquests ; 
how  Americans  sent  corn,  and  the  very  Turks — yea, 
negro  slaves — sent  money  for  alms,  which  the  British 
government  was  not  ashamed  to  administer  to  the 
*  sister-country ;'  and  how  in  every  one  of  these  years 
— 1 846, 1 847  and  1 848 — Ireland  was  exporting  to  Eng- 
land food  to  the  value  of  fifteen  million  pounds  ster- 
ling, and  had  on  her  own  soil  at  each  harvest  good 
and  ample  provision  for  double  her  own  population, 
notwithstanding  the  potato  blight." 

The  next  is  Alexander  M.  Sullivan,  now  member 
of  Parliament.  The  passage  is  from  New  Ireland : 
"  I  saw  the  horrible  phantasmagoria — would  to  God 
it  were  but  that !  —  pass  before  my  eyes.  Blank, 
stolid  dismay,  a  sort  of  stupor,  fell  upon  the  people, 
contrasting  remarkably  with  the  fierce  energy  put 
forth  before.  It  was  no  uncommon  sight  to  see  the 
cottier  and  his  little  family  seated  on  the  garden-fence 
gazing  all  day  long  in  moody  silence  at  the  blighted 
plot  that  had  been  their  last  hope.  Nothing  could 
arouse  them.  You  spoke ;  they  answered  not.  You 
tried  to  cheer  them  ;  they  shook  their  heads.  I  never 
saw  so  sudden  and  so  terrible  a  transformation.  .  .  . 
I  doubt  if  the  world  ever  saw  so  huge  a  demoraliza- 
tion, so  vast  a  degradation,  visited  upon  a  once  high- 
spirited  and  sensitive  people.  All  over  the  country 
large  iron  boilers  were  set  up  in  which  what  was 
called  soup  was  concocted,  later  on  Indian  meal  stir- 
about was  boiled.     Around  these  boilers  on  the  road- 


1 88  PECULIAR   FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

side  there  daily  moaned  and  shrieked  and  fought  and 
scuffled  crowds  of  gaunt,  cadaverous  creatures  that 
had  once  been  men  or  women  in  the  image  of  God. 
The  feeding  of  dogs  in  a  kennel  was  far  more  decent 
and  orderly.  I  once  thought — ay,  and  often  bitterly 
said  in  public  and  private — that  never,  never  would 
our  people  recover  the  shameful  humiliation  of  that 
brutal  public  soup-boiler  scene.  I  frequently  stood 
and  watched  till  tears  blinded  me  and  I  almost 
choked  with  grief  and  passion.  It  was  heartbreak- 
ing, almost  maddening,  to  see.  But  help  for  it  there 
was  none.  .  .  .  Soon  beneath  the  devouring  pangs 
of  starvation  the  famishing  people  poured  into  the 
workhouses,  which  soon  choked  with  the  dying  and 
the  dead.  Such  privations  had  been  endured  in  every 
case  before  this  hated  ordeal  was  faced  that  the  peo- 
ple entered  the  bastille  merely  to  die.  The  parting 
scenes  of  husband  and  wife,  father,  mother  and  chil- 
dren, at  the  board-room  door  would  melt  a  heart  of 
stone.  Too  well  they  felt  that  it  was  an  eternal  sev- 
erance, and  that  this  loving  embrace  was  to  be  the 
last  on  earth.  The  warders  tore  them  asunder — the 
husband  from  the  wife,  the  mother  from  the  child — 
for  *  discipline  '  "required  that  it  should  be  so.  But, 
with  the  famine-fever  in  every  ward  and  the  air 
around  them  laden  with  death,  they  knew  their  fate, 
and  parted  like  victims  at  the  foot  of  the  guillotine. 
It  was  not  long  until  the  workhouses  overflowed  and 
could  admit  no  more.  .  .  .  The  first  remarkable  sign 
of  the  havoc  death  was  making  was  the  decline  and 


PECULIAR   FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.   1 89 

disappearance  of  funerals :  there  was  a  rapid  decline 
in  the  number  of  attendants,  until  at  length  persons 
were  stopped  on  the  road  and  requested  to  assist  in 
conveying  the  corpse  a  little  farther.  Soon,  alas ! 
neither  coffin  nor  shroud  could  be  supplied.  Daily, 
in  the  street  and  on  the  footway  some  poor  creature 
lay  down  as  if  to  sleep  and  presently  was  stiff  and 
stark.  In  our  district  it  was  a  common  occurrence 
to  find,  on  opening  the  front-door  in  early  morning, 
leaning  against  it  the  corpse  of  some  victim  who  in 
the  night-time  had  *  rested '  in  its  shelter.  We  raised 
a  public  subscription  and  employed  two  men  with 
horse  and  cart  to  go  around  each  day  and  gather  up 
the  dead.  One  by  one  they  were  taken  to  a  great 
pit  at  Ardnabrahir  Abbey  and  dropped  through  the 
hinged  bottom  of  a  *  trap  '  coffin  into  a  common  grave 
below.  In  the  remoter  rural  districts  even  this  rude 
sepulture  was  impossible.  In  the  field  and  by  the 
ditch-side  the  victims  lay  as  they  fell  till  some  char- 
itable hand  was  found  to  cover  them  with  the  ad- 
jacent soil.  .  .  .  Whole  families  perished  unvisited 
and  unassisted.  By  levelling  above  their  corpses  the 
hovel  in  which  they  died  the  neighbors  gave  them  a 
grave.  .  .  .  Under  the  pressure  of  hunger  ravenous 
creatures  prowled  around  barn  and  store-house  steal- 
ing corn,  potatoes,  cabbage,  turnips — anything,  in  a 
word,  that  might  be  eaten." 

The  English  government  was  present  while  these 
scenes  were  being  enacted.     Any  one  who  supposes 

that  no  government,  even  a  government  of  Hotten- 
32 


190  PECULIAR   FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

tots  or  Apaches,  would  permit  such  scenes,  may  rest 
assured  that  the  government  was  indeed  present. 
Here  is  the  indisputable  evidence  :  '"Bantry  Sessions, 
— Timothy  Leary  and  Mary  Leary  were  indicted  for 
that  they,  on  the  14th  January,  at  Oakmount,  did 
feloniously  steal  twenty  turnips  and  fifty  parsnips, 
the  property  of  James  Gillman.  Found  guilty.  Sen- 
tence :  Transportation  for  seven  years." 

The  next  witness  is  a  landlord's  agent.  His  name 
is  William  Steuart  Trench,  and  he  has  written  a  book 
entitled  Realities  of  Irish  Life.  He  was  a  landlord's* 
agent,  and  his  book  abounds  in  cant  and  self-com- 
placency; he  certainly  exaggerates  nothing  at  the 
expense  of  the  class  to  which  he  belongs :  **  When  I 
first  reached  Kenmare,  in  the  winter  of  1849-50,  the 
form  of  destitution  had  changed  in  some  degree,  but 
it  was  still  very  great.  It  was  true  that  people  no 
longer  died  of  starvation,  but  they  were  dying  nearly 
as  fast  of  fever,  dysentery  and  scurvy  within  the  walls 
of  the  workhouse.  Food  there  was  now  in  abun- 
dance, but  to  entitle  the  people  to  obtain  it  they  were 
compelled  to  go  into  the  workhouse  and  *  auxiliary ' 
sheds  until  these  were  crowded  almost  to  suffoca- 
tion." 

The  American  reader  may  marvel  why  starving 
men,  women  and  children  should  not  be  given  food 
without  compelling  them  to  incur  the  risk  of  death 
from  fever  if  they  escaped  death  from  hunger ;  but 
this  was  another  way  the  English  government  had 
of  showing  how  desirous  it  was  to  save  the  lives  of 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.   I9I 

its  Irish  subjects.  The  late  Earl  Beaconsfield  said 
that  there  were  worse  evils  than  Irish  famines,  mean- 
ing that  a  reduction  of  the  population  was  a  blessing. 
Some  economists,  more  humane,  have  urged  that 
emigration  should  be  promoted  to  reduce  the  pop- 
ulation, on  the  ground  that  the  country  is  incapable 
of  supporting  so  many.  But  it  has  been  established 
by  those  whose  testimony  is  unanswerable  that  Ire- 
land is  able  to  support  twenty  millions  of  people ; 
and  it  is  a  fact  perfectly  authenticated  that,  while  her 
people  were  actually  dying  by  tens  of  thousands  in 
the  pangs  of  hunger,  she  was  exporting,  says  John 
Mitchel,  "food  enoucrh  to  sustain  eicfht  milh'ons." 

Mr.  Trench,  the  landlord's  agent,  continues  :  "  Sev- 
eral of  the  respectable  shopkeepers  informed  me  that 
at  this  period  four  or  five  dead  bodies  were  frequent- 
ly found  in  the  streets  or  on  the  flags  in  the  morning,  ■ 
the  remains  of  poor  people  who  had  wandered  in 
from  the  country  in  search  of  food,  and  that  they 
dreaded  to  open  their  door  lest  a  corpse  should  be 
found  leaning  against  it."  This  was  three  years 
after  the  blight  of  the  potato ;  the  country  was  still 
in  the  famine.  The  government  had  had  ample  time 
to  go  to  the  rescue  of  the  starving ;  but,  says  Mr. 
Trench,  "the  quantity  of  food  given  was  so  small, 
and  the  previous  destitution  through  which  they  had 
passed  was  so  severe,  that  nearly  as  many  died  now 
under  the  hands  of  the  guardians  as  had  perished 
before  by  actual  starvation." 

A  farmer  in  County  Cavan,  who  is  at  present  vis- 


ig2  PECULIAR   FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

iting  with  his  children  in  the  city  of  Philadelphia! 
has  told  me  a  famine-fact  which  I  have  never  seen 
stated.  He  was  steward  of  certain  public  works  at 
the  famine-time.  So  weak  had  the  strongest  men 
become  that  they  were  unable  to  stand  upright  while 
laboring  on  the  roads ;  many  women  who  were  glad 
to  do  the  same  work  were  missing  portions  of  every 
day,  compelled  to  lie  down  in  the  fields  from  utter 
exhaustion ;  and  the  kind-hearted  steward,  whose 
duty  it  was  to  report  for  the  receipt  of  the  pittance 
allowed  only  those  on  actual  duty,  was  daily  obliged 
to  shut  his  eyes  as  he  passed  the  places  where  the 
women  should  have  been  toiling,  in  order  that  he 
might  excuse,  to  himself  at  least,  his  failure  to  re- 
port their  absence  and  thereby  save  them  the  few 
pennies  grudgingly  granted.  That  the  government 
agents  connived  to  slay  the  people  is  also  well  at- 
tested. This  upright  and  sturdy  man  informed  the 
writer  that  to  keep  down  the  tax  for  the  support  of 
the  poor  the  next  year  absolutely  necessary  food 
was  often  withheld  by  those  having  it  to  distribute. 
Each  parish  was  assessed  in  proportion  to  the  num- 
ber of  paupers  who  received  relief;  the  fewer  re- 
ported, the  lower  the  landlords'  taxes  the  year  fol- 
lowing. Many  victims  were  undoubtedly  sent  into 
famine-graves  to  diminish  the  landlords'  expenditure. 
Mr.  Trench  promised  work  to  the  people  at  Ken- 
mare  :  "  Three  hundred  gaunt,  half-famished  men 
and  nearly  as  many  boys  and  women  appeared  in 
my  field  the  next  morning,  all  of  them  claiming  my 


i '.' '  .i%im 


PECULIAR   FEATURES   OF  LANDLORDISM.  I95 

promise,  but  none  of  them  having  any  tools  where- 
with to  labor."  The  very  hovels  had  been  robbed 
to  raise  at  auction,  for  the  landlord,  some  fraction  of 
arrears  of  rent !  "  Here  was  a  new  dilemma.  The 
offer  of  employment  had  been  accepted  with  only 
too  great  avidity ;  but  the  creatures  had  not  a  spade 
nor  a  pickaxe  nor  a  working-tool  amongst  them." 
He  procured  some  tools,  "  and,  partly  by  buying, 
partly  by  borrowing,  and  by  making  some  of  them 
work  with  their  hands,  I  managed  to  keep  them 
employed." 

The  agent  found  that  a  more  economical  step 
would  be  to  pay  the  passage  of  a  considerable  num- 
ber of  the  people  to  America.  The  landlord  agreed 
to  furnish  the  money,  purely  as  a  means  of  evading 
the  tax  which  the  poor  would  be  on  the  estate,  and 
three  thousand  five  hundred  paupers  were  shipped 
by  Lord  Lansdowne  to  this  country  to  get  rid  of 
them.  Perhaps  Americans  may  yet  inquire  by  what 
right  His  Lordship  manufactures  paupers  for  ship- 
ment, and  by  what  clause  in  international  law  he  is 
justified  in  delivering  them  on  American  soil,  to  be 
supported  here  until  they  recover  from  the  effects 
of  His  Lordship's  process  of  reducing  them  from 
manhood  to  pauperism. 

While  the  wretched  victims  of  landlordism  were 
dying  they  were  in  many  instances  driven  off  their 
little  holdings  by  landlords'  commands — not  be  ex- 
ported at  their  expense,  but  simply  to  die  on  the 
highways.     Mr.  George  Sigerson  tells  in  his  Histo}y 


1(^6  PECULIAR   FEATURES   OF  LANDLORDISM. 

of  Land  Tenures  in  Irelmid  that  the  "  tenantry  were 
driven  out  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet  with  a  re- 
morseless cruelty  which  has  never  been  paralleled 
in  any  time  nor  in  any  country.  The  transplantation 
of  Cromwell  was  a  merciful  and -considerate  act  in 
comparison  with  these  ruthless  devastations;  for 
their  authors  spared  neither  babes  at  the  breast, 
pregnant  mothers  nor  dying  men,  but  from  the 
homes  their  fathers  had  erected  thrust  all  forth,  and 
not  unfrequently  in  the  midst  of  rigorous  winters 
and  beneath  pitiless  storms  of  snow  and  sleet." 

Mr.  Sigerson  quotes  Lord  Clarendon,  British 
minister  of  foreign  affairs  in  1869,  addressing  an 
English  agricultural  society :  "  They  were  practical 
men,  and  he  would  ask  any  gentleman  present  if  he 
were  to  take  a  farm  at  will  upon  which  the  landed 
proprietor  never  did,  and  never  intended  to  do,  any- 
thing, and  were  to  build  upon  the  farm  a  house  and 
homestead  and  effectually  drain  the  land,  and  then 
be  turned  out  on  a  six  months'  notice  or  less,  would 
any  language  be  strong  enough  to  condemn  such 
a  felonious  act  as  that?"  This  very  day  tenants 
are  being  evicted  in  Ireland  by  bayonets  under 
precisely  these  conditions.  Many  fell  behind  in 
the  rents  two  years  ago  on  account  of  the  famine 
and  have  not  been  able  to  pay  up ;  and  Gladstone 
permitted  the  House  of  Lords  to  so  amend  the  new 
Land  Act  as  to  exclude  these  unfortunate  people 
from  its  benefits.  There  have  been  at  least  three 
thousand  evictions  in  Ireland  this  year,  and  we  shall 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM,   19/ 

learn  from  eye-witnesses  what  eviction  means  in 
1 88 1,  as  we  have  learned  from  eye-witnesses  what 
it  meant  thirty  years  ago. 

If  we  go  back  fifty  years,  we  find  the  Irish  land- 
lord the  same  man  that  he  is  to-day.  A  now  rare, 
but  to  the  humanitarian  and  the  student  of  political 
economy  quaint  and  valuable,  book,  entitled  An 
Address  to  the  Landlords  of  Ireland  on  Subjects 
connected  zvith  the  Melioration  of  the  Lozver  Classes, 
by  Martin  Doyle,  and  published  in  Dublin,  London 
and  Edinburgh,  arraigns  the  landlords  for  precisely 
the  evils  which  exist  in  Ireland  to-day.  The  volume 
is  not  political,  but  social,  and  the  author  defines 
these  to  be  the  causes  which  had  then  created 
universal  poverty  in  Ireland  among  the  workers  of 
the  soil : 

1.  The  want  of  sufficient  employment; 

2.  The  indolence  and  inattention  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  the  landed  proprietary,  their  want  of  enter- 
prise, and  their  neglect  of  their  estates ; 

3.  Absenteeism ; 

4.  The  wholesale  evictions. 

This  is  the  picture  Doyle  presents  of  Ireland  in 
the  year  (183 1)  in  which  he  wrote:  ''Vagrancy  and 
suffering,  and  sometmies  famine,  on  which  hang 
pestilence  and  every  misery  at  which  the  heart  of 
philanthropy  sickens,  are  so  familiar  to  their  experi- 
ence that  the  resident  proprietors  of  the  soil  are  in 
general  little  affected  by  circumstances.  .  .  .  If  a  sol- 
itary group  of  woe-worn,  houseless  parents,  followed 


198  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

by  their  ill-clothed  offspring  through  the  daily  cold 
and  wearisome  pilgrimage  that  utter  destitution 
renders  necessary  to  the  prolongation  of  that  life  to 
which  even  misery  will  cling,  clad  in  the  torn  and 
threadbare  blanket  which  at  night  is  to  be  the  only 
covering  of  their  exhausted  frames  in  some  cheerless 
hovel, — if  such  a  picture  were  only  to  be  seen  in  its 
dismal  coloring  here  and  there,  it  is  easy  to  conceive 
with  what  intensity  of  feeling  it  would  be  viewed. 
.  .  .  But  the  eye  of  the  resident  landlord  is  accus- 
tomed to  the  aspect  of  squalid  wretchedness  ;  ...  he 
rolls  in  his  comfortable  chariot  to  the  house  of 
mirth  and  feasting  without  a  sigh  for  the  wretched- 
ness of  those  to  whom  the  crumbs  that  fall  from  his 
table  would  be  a  high-prized  boon."  As  for  absen- 
teeism, "  its  lamentable  effects  are  unhappily  too 
apparent  for  ingenuity  to  palliate  or  selfishness  to 
excuse." 

Doyle  points  out  to  the  Irish  landlords  the  excel- 
lent example  to  be  found  on  certain  English  estates, 
and  then — a  false  prophet,  as  fifty  years  of  miser)'- 
attest — he  says  :  "  The  facilities  of  steam-intercourse 
with  Great  Britain  are  so  great  that  Ireland  must 
rapidly  share  the  advantages  which  every  province 
of  England  enjoys."  A  false  prophet;  for  England 
has  drawn  Ireland  more  closely  to  her  as  a  bear 
hugs  its  victim  in  its  savage  embrace.  Steam  has 
more  swiftly  brought  from  England  to  Ireland  bay- 
onets and  coercion  laws,  and  from  her  rich  and 
generous    bosom   it   has   the   more   speedily  borne 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.   1 99 

away  the  wealth  that  never  goes  back  by  steam  or 
by  sail.  Not  only  has  closer  intercourse  brought 
Ireland  no  new  advantages  from  her  foreign  ruler, 
but  it  is  an  almost  startling  truth  that  it  is  the  poor 
of  England  who  have  been  benefited  at  the  expense 
of  the  poorer  Irish.  No  English  agitator  is  in  a 
prison  to-day  for  demanding  lower  rents  for  the 
English  tenant-farmers ;  yet  this  telegram  appears  in 
an  American  journal  with  strong  English  predilec- 
tions (the  quotation  is  from  the  New  York  Herald, 
November  6,  1 881):  "  Lord  Fitzwilliam  has  remitted 
unconditionally  the  past  half-year's  rent  of  all  his 
tenants.  Many  other  English  landed  proprietors 
are  making  large  deductions,  thus  taking  the  sting 
out  of  the  land  agitation  in  England."  Thus  does 
history  repeat  itself.  While  Irish  tenants,  for  whom 
the  agitation  was  made,  are  being  evicted  for  not 
paying  arrears  of  rent  which  a  season  of  famine 
rendered  unavoidable,  and  while  three  hundred  of 
their  leaders  are  in  prison,  refused  bail  and  denied 
trial,  the  English  tenants,  who  have  suffered  no 
famine,  receive  a  half-year's  rent  as  a  voluntar}^ 
gift  from  their  landlords.  So  in  1829,  when  four- 
fifths  of  the  people  of  Ireland  were  still  without 
religious  liberty,  one  of  the  conditions  which  the 
English  government  attached  to  its  concession — 
a  concession  yielded  only  because  the  country  was 
on  the  brink  of  insurrection — was  that  the  voters 
in  Ireland  who  paid  forty  shillings  rent  should  be 
deprived  of  their   votes.     This  was    done,  and   the 


200  PECULIAR  FEATURES   OF  LANDLORDISM 

suffrage  was  given  instead  to  the  forty-shilling  free- 
holders of  England. 

Another  almost  as  striking  illustration  of  the  truth 
that  time  and  closer  intercourse  with  her  government 
has  done  nothing  for  Ireland  is  furnished  by  Mr. 
Trench,  with  no  intention  on  his  part  of  doing  so. 
The  reader  who  examines  the  list  of  Irish  landlords 
in  Thom's  Directory  for  the  current  year  will  find 
there  this,  on  page  750 :  "  Shirley,  Evelyn  Philip, 
26,386  acres;  valuation,  ;^20,744."  The  estate  is 
Farney.  It  doubtless  gives  him  an  income  of  up- 
ward of  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  annually.  This 
estate  was  placed  in  Trench's  hands  forty  years  ago ; 
he  recites  its  history.  On  another  page  it  has  been 
affirmed  that  if  a  lawyer  follows  up  the  record  of  a 
great  estate  in  Ireland,  he  will  discover  that  its  pres- 
ent title  was  bom  in  a  confiscation.  Mr.  Shirley's 
estate  is  no  exception.  Trench  asserts,  with  land- 
lord pride,  that  it  was  presented  by  Queen  Elizabeth 
to  her  favorite,  Essex.  Of  course  Essex  was  an  ab- 
sentee landlord.  The  queen  had  boldly  confiscated 
it  from  the  rightful  owners,  whose  name  was  Mac 
mahon,  and  Trench  relates  that  they  had  the  audacity 
to  attempt  to  disturb  those  whom  the  new  proprietor 
placed  upon  it.  Finally,  Essex  allowed  Macmahon 
to  occupy  it  on  condition  of  his  paying  annually  as 
rent  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds — not  at  Farney, 
but  in  Dublin,  the  handsome  earl  not  caring  to  go 
after  his  money.  If  there  was  any  evidence  on  record 
that  the  earl  spent  money  improving  the  estate,  Mr. 


PECULIAR  FEATURES   OF  LANDLORDISM.  201 

Trench  would  be  pleased  to  reproduce  it ;  we  must 
assume,  in  the  absence  of  the  evidence,  that  the  im- 
provements were  made  by  the  tenants,  and  they  so 
increased  its  value  that  when  next  the  rent  was  raised 
it  became  fifteen  hundred  pounds  annually;  and  a 
Macmahon  had  to  pay  it.  This  Macmahon  was  so 
industrious  that  a  new  set  of  tenants  are  soon  found 
paying  over  two  thousand  pounds  a  year.  When  the 
third  earl  of  Essex  died  he  bequeathed  the  estate  to 
his  two  sisters,  one  of  whom  married  a  Shirley,  the 
ancestor  of  the  present  landlord.  Soon  the  rent 
amounted  to  eight  thousand  pounds  a  year.  Now 
the  original  estate,  of  which  Farney  is  only  a  part, 
brings  in  forty  thousand  pounds  a  year,  and  it  is 
perfectly  reasonable  to  assume  that  the  entire  in- 
crease in  its  value  was  made  by  tenants  whose  labor, 
time  and  capital  were  constantly  confiscated.  True 
to  the  hereditary  practice,  the  present  landlord  re- 
fused to  make  improvements  which  would  have 
benefited  the  tenants  as  well  as  himself,  and  Mr. 
Trench  was  compelled  to  abandon  his  efforts  to 
control  either  the  tenants  or  the  landlord,  whose 
exactions  exasperated  the  people  at  times  into  im- 
potent fury. 

The  American  reader,  to  whom  famine  and 
eviction  are  unknown,  may  well  inquire  whether 
such  poverty,  with  famine  and  eviction,  as  was  de- 
scribed by  Doyle  in  183 1  and  by  Sullivan,  Mitchel, 
Xrench  and  Sigerson  in  1847,  1848,  1849  and  1850, 
occurred  during  the  past  two  years.   The  simple  truth 


202  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

is  that  the  peasant-farmer  in  Ireland  is  no  better  off 
to-day  than  he  was  fifty  years  ago. 

Mr.  James  Redpath  is  well  known  to  the  people 
of  the  United  States  as  an  independent,  alert  and 
intrepid  man.  He  bore  a  heroic  part  in  the  struggle 
to  make  ours  a  republic  in  fact  as  well  as  in  name, 
and  it  would  have  been  impossible  twenty  years  ago 
to  convince  him  that  there  was  any  other  human 
being  whose  lot  was  so  miserable  as  that  of  the 
black  slave  in  the  United  States.  Ill-health  induced 
him  to  take  a  sea- voyage  in  the  winter  of  1879,  and 
he  went  to  Ireland  to  see  if  there  was  any  truth  in 
the  alleged  distress.  Incredulous  and  prejudiced 
against  the  Land  League,  he  determined  to  see  and 
hear  for  himself  He  spent  the  summer  of  1880, 
and  again  that  of  1 88 1,  in  Ireland.  He  wrote  the 
results  of  his  tours  there ;  and  the  following  are  con- 
densed extracts  from  his  letters : 

"  One  day  about  three  months  ago  I  was  riding  in 
an  Irish  jaunting-car  in  the  parish  of  Islaneady,  in 
the  county  Mayo.  My  companion  was  the  Rev. 
Thomas  O'Malley ;  he  had  been  the  parish  priest  of 
Islaneady  for  more  than  twenty  years.  It  was  one 
of  my  first  rides  in  the  country,  and  everything  was 
new  to  me.  As  we  drove  out  we  met  large  numbers 
of  the  countrywomen — comely  maidens,  sturdy  mat- 
rons, wrinkled  grandmothers — trudging  along  with 
bare  feet  in  the  cold  mud  on  their  way  to  the  market 
at  Westport :  nine  women  out  of  every  ten  go  bare- 
footed in  the  rural  districts  of  the  West  of  Ireland. 


PECULIAR   FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  203 

Here  and  there,  on  both  sides  of  the  road,  I  saw,  as 
you  see  everywhere  in  the  county  Mayo,  the  ruins 
of  little  cabins  that  had  once  been  the  homes  of  a 
hardy  and  hard-working  and  hospitable  peasantry. 

"  I  turned  to  Father  O'Malley  and  asked  him, 

"  *  Have  there  been  many  evictions  in  your  parish  ?' 

"  *  Yes,'  said  the  old  man  ;  '  when  I  was  a  young 
priest  there  were  eighteen  hundred  families  in  this 
parish,  but ' — his  face  grew  sad  and  his  voice  quiver- 
ed with  emotion  as  he  added — *  there  are  only  six 
hundred  families  now.' 

"  *  Well,'  I  said,  '  what  has  become  of  the  missing 
twelve  hundred  families  ?' 

"  '  They  were  driven  out,'  he  answered,  *  by  famine 
and  the  landlords.' 

*^ '  Famine  and  the  landlords !' 

"  Now,  if  this  answer  had  been  made  by  one  of 
the  Irish  land  reformers — by  Mr.  Parnell,  for  ex- 
ample, or  Michael  Davitt — I  should  have  regarded 
the  phrase  as  an  excellent  '  bit '  of  rhetorical  art,  as 
a  skilful  coupling  of  two  evils  not  necessarily  mates, 
and  I  should  have  smiled  at  the  forced  marriage  and 
then  thought  no  more  about  it. 

**  But  the  words  impressed  me  profoundly  when 
they  came  from  the  lips  of  an  old  priest,  a  cadet  of 
an  ancient  Irish  family,  a  man  of  the  most  conserv- 
ative temperament,  whose  training  and  whose  office 
might  have  been  expected  to  intensify  his  natural 
bias  in  favor  of  existing  institutions  and  established 
authority.     For  the  Catholic  Church  is  the  most  po- 


204  PECULIAR   FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

tent  conservative  force  in  our  modern  society.  It 
teaches  its  adherents  to  render  unto  Caesar  the  things 
that  are  Caesar's,  and  it  rarely  arrays  itself  against 
the  civil  authority.  . 

**  Yet  I  found  that  in  Ireland,  wherever  there  was 
famine,  there  the  Catholic  priest  did  not  hesitate  to 
declare  both  in  private  and  in  print  that  the  primary 
causes  of  Irish  destitution  were  the  exactions  of  the 
landlords. 

"  During  my  recent  visit  to  Ireland  I  gave  both 
my  days  and  my  nights  to  the  study  of  the  famine. 
I  interviewed  the  representative  managers  of  the 
duchess  of  Marlborough  fund,  the  Mansion-House 
fund,  the  Philadelphia  fund,  the  Herald  {\ind,  and  the 
National  Irish  Land  League  fund.  I  interviewed 
Catholic  priests  and  Protestant  clergymen,  British 
officials  and  American  consuls,  Irish  journalists  and 
Irish  drummers,  Irish  lords  and  Irish  peasants — 
everybody  I  met,  everywhere,  who  knew  anything 
about  the  famine  from  personal  observation.  I  never 
had  to  tell  where  I  came  from,  because  I  asked  so 
many  questions  that  nobody  ever  doubted  for  a 
single  moment  that  I  was  what  Father  O'Farrell 
called  me  the  other  day — '  a  pure  unadulterated 
Yankee.' 

"  I  shall  not  call  witnesses  from  the  committees 
of  the  Land  League,  because  they  might  be  sus- 
pected of  exaggerating  the  distress  in  order  to  dem- 
onstrate the  evils  of  a  government  by  landlords. 
I  shall  show  the  imperative  need  o^  the  Irish  Land 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM,  20$ 

League  by  the  evidence  of  its  enemies  and  the 
friends  of  the  landlords. 

"  From  six  hundred  and  ninety  districts  six  hun- 
dred and  ninety  reports  made  to  the  Mansion-House 
demonstrate  the  appalling  fact  that  there  are 

In  the  Province  of  Leinster 28,000 

In  the  Province  of  Ulster 180,000 

In  the  Province  of  Munster 233,000 

In  the  Province  of  Connaught 422,000 

In  all  Ireland 863,000 

persons  at  this  very  hour  whose  strongest  hope  of 
seeing  the  next  harvest-moon  rise  as  they  stand  at 
their  own  cabin-doors  rests,  and  almost  solely  rests, 
on  the  bounty  of  the  stranger  and  of  the  exiles  of 
Erin.  I  have  not  a  shadow  of  a  shade  of  doubt 
that  there  are  to-day  in  Ireland  one  million  of  peo- 
ple hungry  and  in  rags — and  by  and  by  I  may  show 
you  why — but  I  can  point  out  province  by  province, 
county  by  county  and  parish  by  parish  where  eight 
hundred  and  sixty-three  thousand  of  them  are  pray- 
ing and  begging  and  clamoring  for  a  chance  to  live 
in  the  land  of  their  birth.  Eight  hundred  and  sixty- 
three  thousand!  Do  you  grasp  this  number?  If 
you  were  to  sit  twelve  hours  a  day  to  see  this  gaunt 
army  of  hunger  pass  in  review  before  you  in  single 
file,  and  one  person  was  to  pass  every  minute,  do  you 
know  how  long  it  would  be  before  you  saw  the  last 
man  pass  ?     Three  years  and  four  months ! 

**  Remember  and  note  well  that  these  statistics  are 
13 


206  PEC  CHAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

not  estimates.  They  are  the  returns,  carefully  ver- 
ified, of  tlie  actual  numbers  on  the  relief  rolls,  or 
of  the  numbers  reported  by  the  local  committees 
as  in  real  distress. 

"  Ikit  I  ought  to  say  that  I  was  not  satisfied  with 
the  v\ast  volume  of  documentary  and  vicarious  ev- 
idence that  I  had  accumulated.  I  personally  visited 
sexeral  of  the  districts  blighted  by  the  famine,  and 
with  my  own  eyes  saw  the  destitution  of  the  peasant- 
ry, and  with  my  own  ears  heard  the  sighs  of  their 
unhappy  wives  and  children.  They  were  the  sad- 
dest days  I  ever  passed  on  earth,  for  never  before 
had  I  seen  human  misery  so  hopeless  and  unde- 
served and  so  profound.  I  went  to  Ireland  because 
a  crowd  of  calamities  had  overtaken  me  that  made 
my  own  life  a  burden  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  but  in 
the  ghastly  cabins  of  the  Irish  peasantry,  without 
fuel,  without  blankets  and  without  food;  among 
half-naked  and  blue-lipped  children  shivering  from 
cold  and  crying  from  hunger;  among  women  who 
were  weeping  because  their  little  ones  were  starving; 
among  men  of  a  race  to  whom  a  fight  is  better  than 
a  feast,  but  whose  faces  now  bore  the  famine's  fear- 
ful stamp  of  terror, — in  the  West  of  Ireland  I  soon 
forgot  eveiy  trouble  of  my  own  life  in  the  dread 
presence  of  the  great  tidal-wave  of  sorrow  that  had 
overwhelmed  an  unhappy  and  unfortunate  and  inno- 
cent people. 

"The  famine-line  follows  neither  the  division- lines 
of  creeds  nor  the  boundary-lines  of  provinces.      It 


PECULTAR  FEATURES  OF  LAXDLORDTSM.  20/ 

runs  from  nortli  to  south — from  a  little  cast  of  the 
city  of  Cork,  in  the  South,  to  Londonderry  in  the 
North — and  it  divides  Ireland  into  two  nearly  equal 
parts.  The  nearer  the  western  coast,  the  hungrier 
the  people. 

"  The  western  half  of  Ireland — from  Donegal  to 
Cork — is  mountainous  and  beautiful,  but  its  climate 
is  inclement.  It  is  scourged  by  the  Atlantic  storms; 
it  is  wet  in  summer  and  bleak  in  winter.  The  larger 
part  of  the  soil  is  either  barren  and  spewy  bogs  or 
stony  and  sterile  hills. 

**  The  best  lands  in  nearly  every  county  have  been 
leased  to  Scotch  and  English  graziers  ;  for  after  the 
terrible  famine  of  1847 — when  the  Irish  people  stag- 
gered and  fainted  with  hunger  and  fever  into  their 
graves  by  tens  of  thousands  and  by  hundreds  of 
thousands ;  when  the  poor  tenants,  too  far  gone  to 
have  the  strength  to  shout  for  food,  faintly  whisper- 
ed for  the  dear  Lord's  sake  for  a  little  bread — the 
landlords  of  the  West  answered  these  piteous  moans 
by  sending  processes  of  ejectment  to  turn  them  out 
into  the  roadside  or  the  poorhouse  to  die,  and  by 
hiring  crowbar  brigades  to  pull  down  the  roof  that 
still  sheltered  the  gasping  people.  As  fast  as  the 
homeless  peasants  died  or  were  driven  into  exile 
their  little  farms  were  rented  out  to  British  graziers. 
The  people  who  could  not  escape  were  forced  to 
take  the  wettest  bogs  and  driest  hill-slopes.  These 
swamps  and  slopes  were  absolutely  worthless ;  they 
could  not  raise  enough  to  feed  a  snipe.     By  the  pa- 


208  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM, 

tient  toil  of  the  people  they  were  redeemed.  Sea- 
weed was  brought  on  the  backs  of  the  farmers  for 
miles  to  reclaim  these  lands. 

"  The  landlord  did  not  spend  one  shilling  to  help 
the  tenant.  He  did  not  build  the  cabin ;  he  did  not 
fence  the  holding ;  he  did  not  drain  the  bog.  In  the 
West  of  Ireland  the  landlord  does  nothing  but  take 
rent.  I  beg  the  landlord's  pardon ;  I  want  to  be  per- 
fectly just.  The  landlord  does  two  things  besides 
taking  the  rent :  he  makes  the  tenant  pay  the  larger 
part  of  the  taxes,  and  as  fast  as  the  farmer  improves 
the  land  the  landlord  raises  the  rent.  And  when- 
ever, from  any  cause,  the  tenant  fails  to  pay  the 
rent,  the  landlord  turns  him  out  and  confiscates  his 
improvements. 

"The  landlords  charge  so  high  a  rent  for  these 
lands  that  even  in  the  best  of  seasons  the  tenants 
can  save  nothing.  To  hide  their  own  exactions 
from  the  execration  of  the  human  race,  the  land- 
lords and  their  parasites  have  added  insult  to  injury 
by  charging  the  woes  of  Ireland  to  the  improvidence 
of  the  people.  Stretched  on  the  rack  of  the  land- 
lord's avarice,  one  bad  season  brings  serious  distress 
to  the  tenant ;  a  second  bad  season  takes  away  the 
helping  hand  of  credit  at  the  merchant's;  and  the 
third  bad  season  beckons  famine  and  fever  to  the 
cabin-door. 

"Now,  the  summer  of  1879  was  the  third  suc- 
cessive bad  season.  When  it  opened  it  found  the 
people  deeply  in  debt     Credit  was  stopped.     But 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  2O9 

for  the  confidence  of  the  shopkeepers  in  the  honesty 
of  the  peasant,  the  distress  would  have  come  a  year 
ago :  it  was  stayed  by  the  kind  heart  of  the  humble 
merchant.  Therefore  the  landlords  have  charged  the 
distress  to  the  system  of  credit ! 

"  There  was  a  heavy  fall  of  rain  all  last  summer. 
The  turf  was  ruined.  Two-thirds  of  the  potato  crop 
was  lost,  on  an  average  of  the  crop  of  all  Ireland ; 
but  in  many  large  districts  of  the  West  not  a  single 
sound  potato  was  dug.  One-half  of  the  turnip  crop 
perished.  The  cereal  crop  suffered,  although  not 
to  so  great  an  extent.  There  was  a  rot  in  sheep  in 
some  places,  and  in  other  places  an  epidemic  among 
the  pigs.  The  fisheries  failed.  The  iron-mines  in  the 
South  were  closed.  Everything  in  Ireland  seemed  to 
have  conspired  to  invite  a  famine. 

"  But  the  British  and  American  farmers  v/ere  also 
the  innocent  causes  of  intensifying  Irish  distress. 

"  In  Donegal,  Mayo,  Galway  and  the  western 
islands  the  small  holders  for  generations  have  never 
been  able  to  raise  enough  from  their  little  farms  to 
pay  their  big  rents.  They  go  over  every  spring  by 
tens  of  thousands  to  England  and  Scotland  and  hire 
out  to  the  farmers  for  wages.  They  stay  there  till 
the  crops  are  harvested.  But  the  great  American 
competition  is  lowering  the  prices  of  farm-produce 
in  Great  Britain  and  the  prices  of  farm-stock,  and 
therefore  the  English  and  Scotch  farmers  for  two  or 
three  years  past  have  not  been  able  to  pay  the  old 
wages  to  these  Irish  laborers.     Last  summer,  instead 


210   PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

of  sending  back  wag^es  to  pay  the  rent,  liosts  of 
Irish  r.inn-hands  had  to  send  for.  money  to  get 
back  again. 

**  Tliese  complex  combinations  of  misfortune  re- 
sulted in  universal  distress.  Everywhere  in  tlie 
strictly  agricultural  regions  of  the  West  the  farmers, 
and  especially  the  small  holders,  suffered  first,  and 
then  the  distress  spread  out  its  ghoul-like  wings 
until  they  overshadowed  the  shopkeepers,  the  ar- 
tisans, the  fishermen,  the  miners  and,  more  than  all. 
the  laborers,  who  had  no  land,  but  who  had  worked 
for  the  more  comfortable  class  of  farmers. 

"These  malignant  influences  blighted  every  county 
in  the  West  of  Ireland,  and  these  mournful  facts  are 
true  of  almost  every  parish  in  all  that  region. 

**  Looking  at  the  physical  causes  of  the  distress, 
every  honest  and  intelligent  spectator  will  say  that 
they  are  cowards  and  libellers  who  assert  that  the 
victims  of  the  famine  are  in  any  way  responsible 
for  it. 

"  Looking  at  the  exactions  of  the  landlords,  none 
but  a  blasphemer  will  pretend  that  the  distress  is  an 
act  of  Providence. 

•*  Let  us  run  rapidly  over  Ireland.  We  will  begin 
with  the  least  distressful  province — the  beautiful 
province  of  Leinster.  Leinster  is  the  garden  of  Ire- 
land. There  is  no  finer  country  in  the  temperate 
zone.  There  is  no  natural  reason  why  poverty 
should  ever  throw  its  blighting  shadows  athwart  the 
green  and  fertile  fields  of  Leinster. 


'PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  21  ^ 

"There  are  resident  landlords  in  the  rural  dis- 
tricts of  Leinster ;  and  wherever  in  Ireland  the 
owners  of  the  soil  live  on  their  own  estates,  the 
peasantry,  as  a  rule,  are  more  justly  dealt  with  than 
when  they  are  left  to  the  tiger-mercy  of  the  agent 
of  the  absentee.  But  it  is  not  the  fertile  soil  only, 
nor  the  presence  of  resident  proprietors  only,  nor 
the  proximity  of  markets  only — nor  is  it  these  three 
causes  jointly — that  accounts  for  the  absence  of 
such  a  long  procession  of  distress  as  the  other  prov- 
inces present 

"  In  some  of  the  fairest  counties  of  Leinster  evic- 
tion has  done  its  perfect  work.  Instead  of  toiling 
peasants,  you  find  fat  bullocks;  instead  of  bright- 
eyed  girls,  you  find  bleating  sheep.  After  the  fam- 
ine of  1847  the  men  were  turned  out  and  the  beasts 
were  turned  in.  The  British  government  cheered 
this  infamy,  for  Irishmen  are  rebels  sometimes,  but 
heifers  are  loyal  always.  There  is  less  distress  in 
the  rural  districts  of  Leinster  because  there  are  few- 
er people  there. 

"  In  the  twelve  counties  of  Leinster  there  are 
38,000  persons  in  distress — in  Dublin,  250;  in  Wex- 
ford, 870;  in  King's  county,  1047;  i^  Meath  and  in 
Westmeath,  1550  each;  in  Kildare,  1567;  in  Kil- 
kenny, 1979;  in  Carlow,  2000;  in  Louth,  3050;  in 
Queen's  county,  4743  ;  in  Wicklow,  5450 ;  in  Long- 
ford, 9557. 

"  In  Carlow,  in  Westmeath,  in  Louth  and  in  one 
district  of  Queen's  county  the  distress  is  expected  to 


214  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM,- 

increase ;  in  Kildare  and  in  King's  county  it  is  not 
expected  to  increase. 

"  You  see  by  this  list  how  moderate  the  returns 
are — how  strictly  they  are  confined  to  famine  or  ex- 
ceptional distress,  as  distinguished  from  chronic  or 
ordinary  poverty — because  there  are  thousands  of 
very  poor  persons  in  the  city  of  Dublin,  and  yet 
there  are  only  two  hundred  and  fifty  reported  as  in 
distress  in  the  entire  county.  They  belong  to  the 
rural  district  of  Glencullen. 

"  Longford  leads  the  list  of  distressed  counties 
in  Leinster.  There  are  no  resident  proprietors  in 
Longford.  Up  to  the  ist  of  March  not  one  of  them 
had  given  a  single  shilling  for  the  relief  of  the  desti- 
tute on  their  estates.  The  same  report  comes  from 
Kilkenny. 

*'  The  distress  in  Leinster  is  among  the  fishermen 
and  small  farmers  and  laborers.  In  Wicklow  the 
fishers  are  kept  poor  because  the  government  refuses 
to  build  harbors  for  their  protection.  In  Westmeath 
*  the  laboring  class  and  the  small  farmers  are  in 
great  distress,'  That  is  the  report  of  the  local 
committee,  and  I  can  confirm  it  by  my  personal 
ooservation. 

"  The  province  of  Leinster  contains  one-fourth  of 
the  population  of  Ireland,  but  it  does  not  contain 
more  than  one-thirtieth  part  of  the  prevailing  dis- 
tress. So  I  shall  take  you  to  one  parish  only — to 
Stradbally,  in  Queen's  county.  It  is  not  included 
in  the  reports  of  the  Mansion-House  committee. 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  21$ 

"  Dr.  John  Magee,  P.  P.,  of  Stradbally,  wrote  to 
me  quite  recently : 

"  *  In  this  parish — one  of  the  most  favorably  circum- 
stanced in  Leinster — such  has  been  their  misery  that 
for  the  last  three  months  I  have  been  doling  out 
charities  to  one  hundred  and  twenty  families.  Some 
of  them  I  found  in  a  state  of  utter  starvation — an 
entire  day,  sometimes,  without  a  morsel  of  food  in 
the  cabin.  But,  most  miserable  of  all  and  what 
makes  the  case  so  affecting,  very  many  of  our  small 
farmers  (whose  pride  would  hide  their  poverty)  are 
now  reduced  to  the  same  plight,  the  rack-rent  (or 
excessive  rent)  having  robbed  them  of  every  avail- 
able salable  chattel  they  possessed.  I  had  missed 
for  some  time  one  of  our  farmers  holding  about 
thirty-five  acres.  On  inquiry,  I  found  that  he  was 
confined  to  his  house  for  want  of  clothing,  and  that 
he  had  eaten  his  last  potatoes  and  the  only  fowl  left 
on  the  place.  To  add  to  his  misery,  the  rack-warner 
had  waited  on  him  the  day  before  to  come  in  with 
his  rent.  In  the  past  week  I  gave  stealthily  to  one 
of  our  farmers — holding  over  sixty  acres  of  land,  and 
who  used  to  have  a  stock  of  eighteen  or  twenty 
milch-cows — a  bag  of  Indian  meal  to  save  his  fam- 
ily from  starvation.  The  man,  with  tears  in  his  eyes, 
told  me  that  "  his  children  had  not  eaten  a  morsel 
for  the  last  twenty-four  hours  ;"  and  I  believed  him. 
Of  the  two  hundred  and  forty  families  in  my  parish, 
one-fifth  of  them  are  in  the  same  miserable  condition 
— without  food,  without  stock,  without  seed  for  the 


2l6  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM, 

land,  without  credit,  and  without  any  possible  hope 
from  the  justice  or  the  sympathy  of  the  English  gov- 
ernment* 

"  Father  Magee  is  not  only  a  good  Irish  priest, 
but  a  profound  student  of  Irish  history.  Will  you 
let  me  read  to  you  what  he  wrote  to  me  about  the 
causes  of  Irish  famines  ? 

"  *  If  I  were  asked,'  he  wrote,  '  Why  is  it  that  Ire- 
land is  so  poor,  with  abundance  of  foreign  grain  and 
food  in  our  ports  ?  Whence  this  famine  that  alarms 
even  the  stranger  ?  my  answer  would  be,  "  Speak  as 
we  may  of  short  and  scanty  harvests,  the  real  cause 
is  landlords'  exactions,  which  drain  the  land  of 
money,  and  which  leave  nothing  to  buy  com. 
Landlord  absolutism  and  unrestrained  rack-rents 
have  always  been,  and  are  at  present,  the  bane 
and  the  curse  of  Ireland.  If  the  harvest  be  good, 
landlordism  luxuriates  and  abstracts  all ;  if  scanty  or 
bad,  landlordism  seizes  on  the  rood  or  cattle  for  the 
rack-rent." 

"  *  I  have  in  my  own  parish,'  he  says,  *  five  or  six 
landlords — not  the  worst  type  of  their  class — ^two  of 
them  of  Cromwellian  descent,  a  third  an  Elizabethan, 
all  enjoying  the  confiscated  estates  of  the  O'Moores, 
O'Lalors  and  O'Kellys,  whose  sons  are  now  the 
miserable  tenants  of  these  estates — tenants  who  are 
paying,  or  trying  to  pay,  forty,  eighty,  and  in  some 
cases  one  hundred  and  twenty,  per  cent,  over  the  gov- 
ernment valuation  of  the  land;  tenants  who  are 
treated  as  slaves  and  starved  as  beggars.     If  these 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  21/ 

tenants  gainsay  the  will  of  the  landlord,  or  even 
complain,  they  are  victimized  on  the  spot.  This 
land  system  pays  over,  from  the  sweat  and  toil  of 
our  inhabitants,  ninety  million  dollars  yearly  to  six 
or  seven  thousand  landlords  who  do  nothing  but 
hunt  a  fox  or  hunt  the  tenantry. 

"  *  The  [British]  government,  that  upholds  this 
cruel  system,  abstracts  thirty-five  millions  more 
from  the  land  in  imperial  taxation,  while  there  is 
left  for  the  food,  clothing  and  subsistence  of  five 
millions  of  people  not  more  than  fifty  million  dol- 
lars, or  about  ten  dollars  per  head,  yearly. 

" '  This  is  the  system,'  says  Father  Magee,  *  that 
produces  our  periodical  famines  ;  which  shames  and 
degrades  us  before  Europe ;  which  presents  us  peri- 
odically before  the  world  as  mendicants,  and  beggars 
before  the  nations.  .  .  .  And  will  any  one  blame  us, 
cost  what  it  may,  if  we  are  resolved  to  get  rid  of  a 
system  that  has  so  long  enslaved  our  people?* 

"  It  was  in  this  province  that  I  gained  my  first 
personal  knowledge  of  the  fierce  celerity  with  which 
the  Irish  landlords  in  years  of  distress  rally  to  the 
assistance — not  of  their  tenants,  but  the  famine.  I 
went  down  from  Dublin  to  attend  an  indignation- 
meeting  over  an  eviction  in  the  parish  of  Ballybrophy, 
near  Knockaroo,  in  Queen's  county. 

"  As  we  drove  from  the  railway-station  I  noticed 
that  three  men  jumped  into  a  jaunting-car  and  fol- 
lowed us.  I  asked  my  companion  if  he  knew  who 
they  were.     *  Oh  yes,'  he  said ;  *  it  is  a  magistrate 


21 8  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

and  two  short-hand  writers  paid  by  the  government. 
They  follow  us  wherever  we  go,  to  get  evidence  of 
seditious  language  to  try  and  convict  us  ;  they  have 
constabulary  with  loaded  muskets  at  all  our  meet- 
ings :  they  think  they  can  overawe  me,  but  they  only 
exasperate  me.'     It  was  Michael  Davitt.  . 

*'  Sure  enough,  when  we  got  to  the  meeting  there 
was  a  platoon  of  armed  constabulary  at  it.  No  one 
pretended  that  there  was  any  risk  of  a  riot  at  Bally- 
brophy,  for  everybody  there  belonged  to  the  same 
party.  Next  week  a  party  of  Orangemen  threatened 
in  advance  to  break  up  a  meeting  of  the  Land  League 
in  a  county  in  Ulster.  Not  a  constable  was  sent 
there,  and  the  Orange  rioters  were  allowed  to  dis- 
perse the  audience  and  shed  the  blood  of  peaceful 
citizens. 

"  Why  was  this  meeting  called  at  Ballybrophy  ? 
Malachi  Kelly,  a  decent  old  man  with  a  wife  and 
five  children,  had  been  turned  out  of  his  house  into 
the  road  by  his  landlord,  a  person  of  the  name  of 
Erasmus  Dickson  Barrows.  Mr.  Kelly  had  paid  his 
rent  without  failing  once  for  thirty  consecutive  years. 
All  his  life  long  he  had  borne  the  reputation  of  an 
honest  and  temperate  and  industrious  man. 

**  His  rent  at  first  was  five  hundred  and  thirty-five 
dollars  a  year.  He  made  improvements  at  his  own 
cost ;  the  rent  was  instantly  raised  to  six  hundred 
and  forty  dollars.  The  landlord  solemnly  promised 
not  to  raise  the  rent  again,  and  to  make  some  im- 
provements   that    were    needed.      Relying    on    this 


PECULIAR  FEATURES   OF  LANDLORDISM.  219 

pledge,  Mr.  Kelly  spent  fifteen  hundred  dollars  in 
erecting  permanent  buildings  in  1873;  the  landlord 
instantly  raised  the  rent  again — this  time  to  sev^cn 
hundred  and  seventy-five  dollars.  In  other  words, 
he  fined  Mr.  Kelly  one  hundred  and  ten  dollars  a 
year  for  the  folly  of  believing  a  landlord's  pledge 
and  for  the  offence  of  increasing  the  value  of  his 
landlord's  estate.  Last  season  Mr.  Kelly's  crop  was 
a  total  failure,  and  the  old  man  could  not  pa)-  the 
rent,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life;  so  he  was  turned 
out  in  his  old  age,  homeless  and  penniless,  and  the 
buildings  that  he  had  erected  at  his  own  cost  became 
the  property  of  his  landlord. 

"  Michael  Davitt  made  a  speech  on  this  eviction, 
and  I  did  not  notice  that  the  loaded  muskets  of  the 
constabulary  overawed  him. 

'*  I  am  a  Protestant  of  Protestantism.  I  conciliate 
nobody,  and  I  ask  favors  of  no  man  ;  but  I  hate  with 
a  hatred  inextinguishable  every  form  of  oppression, 
and  I  shall  strike  at  it  in  the  future,  as  1  have  done 
in  the  past,  without  waiting  to  inquire  its  name  or  to 
look  at  its  flag. 

"  In  the  province  of  Ulster,  on  the  first  day  of 
March  last,  the  local  committees  of  the  Mansion- 
House,  one  hundred  and  thirty-one  in  number,  re- 
ported that  there  were  in  distress,  in  eight  counties, 
160,880  persons — in  Antrim,  220;  in  Down,  800;  in 
Armagh,  10.455;  ^^  Monaghan,  7447;  in  Cavan. 
34.709;  in  Fermanagh,  12,768;  in  Tyrone,  7447;  in 
Donegal,  87,034.     Fourteen  of  the  Ulster  commit- 


220  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM, 

tees  report  that  the  distress  is  likely  or  certain  to 
increase.  The  most  moderate  estimate,  therefore,  of 
the  army  of  hunger  in  the  province  of  Ulster,  includ- 
ing the  county  of  Londonderry,  would  put  the  figures 
at  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand.  It  is  more  prob- 
ably two  hundred  thousand. 

"  Yet  this  vast  aggregation  of  human  misery  exists 
in  a  province  in  which  the  Belfast  manufactories  em- 
ploy large  numbers  of  boys  and  girls,  and  so  to  a 
considerable  extent  relieve  the  agricultural  classes, 
both  by  sending  back  wages  to  the  cabins  in  the 
country  and  by  affording  a  home  market  for  their 
produce.  And  in  justice  to  the  Catholic  provinces 
let  it  be  remembered  that  the  reason  why  there  are 
no  manufactories  in  Connaught  and  Munster  is  be- 
cause the  English  Parliament  for  several  generations 
by  positive  legislation  prevented  their  establishment, 
and  because,  since  these  infamous  laws  were  repealed, 
their  disastrous  results  have  been  conserved  by  com- 
binations among  the  English  manufacturers. 

"  Listen  to  a  report  of  how  one  landlord,  *  a  noble 
lord,'  helped  the  distress  on  his  own  estates  in  the 
county  Cavan. 

"  It  is  the  Rev.  Father  Joseph  Flood  who  speaks : 
'  In  the  midst  of  cries  of  distress  around  me,  while 
Protestants  and  Catholics,  here  as  elsewhere,  are 
struggling  to  keep  together  the  bodies  and  souls 
of  this  year's  visitation,  I  was  hurried  off  to  witness 
the  heartless  eviction  of  five  whole  families — thirty 
souls  in  all — of  ages  varying  from  eighty  years  to 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  221 

two  years.  At  twelve  o'clock  to-day,  in  the  midst 
of  a  drenching  rain,  when  every  man's  lips  are  busy 
discussing  how  relief  can  be  carried  to  this  home  and 
that,  an  imposing  spectacle  presented  itself  through  a 
quiet  part  of  the  parish  of  King's  Court.  A  carriage 
containing  Mr.  Hussey,  Jr.,  son  of  the  agent  of  Lord 
Gormanston ;  behind  and  before  it  about  a  dozen  out- 
side cars,  with  a  resident  magistrate,  an  inspector  of 
police,  about  forty  of  Her  Majesty's  force,  the  sheriff 
and  some  dozens  of  as  rapacious-looking  drivers  and 
grippers  as  I  ever  laid  my  eyes  upon.  There  is  a 
dead  silence  at  the  halt  before  the  first  doomed  door. 
That  silence  was  broken  by  myself,  craving  to  let  the 
poor  people  in  again  after  the  vindication  of  the  law. 
The  sheriff  formally  asks, 

"'"Have  you  the  rent r 

"  *  The  trembling  answer  is, 

" ' "  My  God !  how  could  I  have  the  whole  rent — 
and  such  a  rent ! — on  such  a  soil  in  such  a  year  as 
this?'* 

" ' "  Get  out !"  is  the  word,  and  right  heartily  the 
grippers  set  to  work.  On  the  dung-heap  is  flung 
the  scanty  furniture,  bed  and  bedding.  The  door 
is  nailed.  The  imposing  army  marches  on  to  the 
next  holding,  till  every  house  has  been  visited  and 
every  soul  turned  out. 

"*At  this  moment  there   is  a  downpour  of  rain 

on  that  poor  bed  and  bedding  and  on  that  miserable 

furniture,  and  an  old   man  whose  generations  have 

passed  their  simple  lives  in  that  house  is  sitting  on 

14 


222  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM, 

a  stone  outside  with  his  head  buried  in  his  hands 
thinking  of  the  eighty-three  years  gone  by.  And 
are  these  tenants  to  blame?  No!  It  is  on  the 
records  of  this  parish  that  they  were  the  most 
simple-minded,  hard-working,  honest  and  virtuous 
people  in  it' 

"This  is  the  sort  of  contribution  that  the  land- 
lords have  made  to  the  distress  in  the  province  of 
Ulster. 

*•  Let  us  now,  in  spirit,  take  the  shoes  from  off 
our  feet  as  we  draw  nigh  the  holy  ground  of  Con- 
naught  and  Munster.  There  is  nothing  on  this 
earth  more  sacred  than  human  sorrow.  Christianity 
itself  has  been  called  the  worship  of  sorrow.  If 
this  definition  be  a  true  one,  then  the  Holy  Land 
of  our  day  is  the  West  of  Ireland.  Every  sod  there 
has  been  wet  with  human  tears.  The  murmurs  of 
every  rippling  brook  there,  from  time  out  of  mind, 
have  been  accompanied  by  an  invisible  chorus  of 
sighs  from  breaking  human  hearts.  Every  breeze 
that  has  swept  across  her  barren  moors  has  carried 
with  it  to  the  summits  of  her  bleak  mountain-slopes 
(and  I  trust  far  beyond  them)  the  groans  and  the 
prayers  of  a  brave  but  a  despairing  people.  The 
sun  has  never  set  on  her  sorrows  excepting  to  give 
place  to  the  pitying  stars  that  have  looked  down  on 
human  woes  that  excel  in  number  their  own  con- 
stellated hosts. 

*'  I  have  heard  so  much  and  I  have  seen  so  much 
of  the  sorrows  of  the  West  that  when  the  memory 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  223 

of  them  rises  up  before  me  I  stand  appalled  at  the 
vision.  Again  and  again  since  I  came  back  from 
Ireland  I  have  tried  to  paint  a  picture  of  Western 
misery ;  but  again  and  again  and  as  often  as  I  have 
tried — even  in  the  solitude  of  my  chamber,  where 
no  human  eye  could  see  me — I  have  broken  down, 
and  I  have  wept  like  a  woman.  If  I  could  put  the 
picture  into  words,  I  could  not  utter  the  words,  for 
I  cannot  look  on  human  sorrow  with  the  cold  and 
aesthetic  eye  of  an  artist.  To  me  a  once-stalwart 
peasant  shivering  in  rags  and  gaunt  and  hollow- 
voiced  and  staggering  with  hunger — to  me  he  is  not 
a  mere  picture  of  Irish  life :  to  me  he  is  a  brother  to 
be  helped ;  to  me  he  is  a  Christian  prisoner  to  be 
rescued  from  the  pitiless  power  of  those  infidel 
Saracens  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  Irish  land- 
lords and  the  British  government. 

"  I  knpw  not  where  to  begin  nor  what  county  to 
select  in  either  of  these  unhappy  provinces. 

"  Dr.  Canon  Finn  of  Ballymote  wrote  to  me  that 
the  priests  in  his  parish  tell  him  that  the  little  chil- 
dren often  come  to  school  without  having  had  a 
mouthful  of  breakfast  to  eat,  and  that  vomiting  and 
stomach  sickness  are  common  among  them. 

"Why? 

" '  I  know  whole  families,'  writes  the  canon,  '  that 
have  to  supplement  what  our  committee  gives  by 
eating  rotten  potatoes  which  they  dig  out  day  by 
day.' 

"  Father  John  O'Keene  of  Dramore  West  wrote  to 


224  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

me  that '  there  are  four  hundred  famiHes  in  his  parish 
dependent  on  the  rehef  committees,  and  one  hundred 
almost  entirely  in  want  of  clothing  and  the  children 
in  a  state  of  semi-nudity.' 

"  Four  hundred  families  !  Let  us  look  at  the  mo- 
ther of  just  one  of  these  four  hundred  famihes. 

"  Listen  to  Father  O'Keene  :  '  On  Sunday  last,  as 
I  was  about  going  to  church,  a  poor  young  woman 
prematurely  aged  by  poverty  came  up  and  spoke  to 
me.     Being  in  a  hurry,  I  said  : 

" ' "  I  have  no  time  to  speak  to  you,  Mrs.  Calpin. 
Are  you  not  on  the  relief  list?" 

"  * "  No,  father,"  she  said,  "  and  we  are  starving." 

" '  Her  appearance  caused  me  to  stop.  She  had 
no  shoes,  and  her  wretched  clothing  made  her  a 
picture  of  misery. 

"  *  I  asked  her  why  her  husband  had  not  come  to 
speak  to  me. 

"'She  said: 

"  * "  He  has  not  had  a  coat  for  the  last  two  years, 
and,  as  this  is  Sunday,  he  did  not  wish  to  trouble 
Thomas  Feeney  for  the  loan  of  one,  as  he  sometimes 
lends  one  to  him." 

"  * "  Have  you  any  other  clothes  besides  what  I 
see  on  you?" 

"  * "  Father,  I  am  ashamed,"  was  the  reply ; "  I  have 
not  even  a  stitch  of  underclothing." 

"  * "  How  many  children  have  you  ?" 

"  * "  Four,  father." 

"  * "  What  are  their  ages  ?" 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  22$ 

• 
"'"The  oldest  a  boy,  eight  years;  a  girl,  seven; 

another,  four;  and  a  little  one  on  the  breast." 

" ' "  Have  they  any  clothes  ?" 

" ' "  No,  father.  You  may  remember  that  when  you 
were  passing  last  September  you  called  into  the  house, 
and  I  had  to  put  the  children  aside  for  their  naked- 
ness." 

" ' "  Have  you  any  bedclothes  ?" 

" '  "  A  couple  of  guano-bags." 

"  ' "  How  could  you  live  for  the  past  week  ?" 

"  * "  I  went  to  my  brother,  Martin  MacGee  of  Far- 
relinfarrel,  and  he  gave  me  a  couple  of  porringers  of 
Indian  meal  each  day,  from  which  I  made  Indian 
gruel.  I  gave  my  husband  the  biggest  part,  as  he 
is  working  in  the  fields." 

"  *  "  Had  you  anything  for  the  children  ?" 

"*"0h,  father,"  she  said,  "the  first  question  they 
put  me  in  the  morning  is :  *  Mother,  have  we  any 
meal  this  day  ?*  If  I  say  I  have,  they  are  happy ;  if 
not,  they  are  sad  and  begin  to  cry." 

"  *  At  these  words  she  showed  great  emotion,  and 
1  could  not  remain  unmoved. 

"  *  This,'  adds  Father  O'Keene,  '  is  one  of  the  many 
cases  I  could  adduce  in  proof  of  the  misery  of  my 
people.* 

"  Are  the  landlords  doing  nothing  for  these  peo- 
ple ?  Certainly.  There  are  nine  hundred  families 
in  the  parish  of  Bruninadden,  in  the  county  of  Cork. 
Canon  McDermott  is  the  priest  there.  Hear  what 
he  wrote  to  me :  *  The  lands  are  in  part  good,  but 


226  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

the  good  lands  are  chiefly  in  the  hands  of  landlords 
and  graziers.  You  can  travel  miles  over  rich  lands 
and  meet  only  the  herds  or  laborers  of  some  absentee 
landlord.  Thirty  landlords  own  this  parish  ;  twenty- 
seven  of  them  are  absentees.  The  three  resident 
proprietors  are  poor  and  needy  themselves.  You  can 
judge  of  the  condition  of  the  tenant-farmers  and  of 
their  relations  with  their  landlords  by  a  statement  of 
facts.  There  are  in  my  parish  two  iron  huts — one  to 
protect  the  bailiff  of  an  absentee  landlord,  the  other 
to  protect  a  resident  landlord.  Again,  in  a  district 
containing  one  hundred  and  sixty  families,  eighty- 
nine  processes  of  ejectment  were  ordered  to  be  served 
by  the  landlords ;  but  in  some  cases  the  process- 
servers  declined  to  act,  and  in  others  the  processes 
were  forcibly  taken  from  them.' 

"  It  is  not  always  a  pastime  to  serve  processes  of 
ejectment  on  a  starving  and  desperate  peasantry. 

"  The  good  canon  continues :  *  Allow  me  to  state 
the  condition  of  some  of  those  on  whom  processes 
were  to  have  been  served.  Pat  Grady,  of  Lugmore, 
has  fourteen  children,  thirteen  of  them  living  with 
him  in  a  small  hut.  He  holds  about  five  acres  of 
unreclaimed  land,  for  which  he  pays  at  the  rate  of 
one  pound  twelve  shillings  (eight  dollars)  an  acre. 
He  owns  neither  a  cow  nor  a  calf  He  has  not  a 
morsel  to  feed  his  children  except  the  twenty-five 
pounds  of  Indian  meal  I  dole  out  to  him  each  week. 
To-day  I  saw  his  ticket  from  a  pawnbroker  for  his 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  22^ 

very  bedclothes.  His  children  sleep  on  straw  or  on 
the  bare  floor/ 

"  But  the  landlord  wanted  his  rent,  for  all  that. 

"  I  have  entered  hundreds  of  Irish  cabins  in  dis- 
tricts where  the  relief  is  distributed.  These  cabins 
are  more  wretched  than  the  cabins  of  the  negroes 
were  in  the  darkest  days  of  slavery.  The  Irish  peas- 
ant can  neither  dress  as  well,  nor  is  he  fed  as  well, 
as  the  Southern  slave  was  fed  and  dressed  and  lodged. 
Donkeys  and  cows  and  pigs  and  hens  live  in  the  same 
wretched  room  with  the  family.  Many  of  these  cabins 
had  not  a  single  article  of  bedclothing  except  guano- 
sacks  or  potato-bags,  and  when  the  old  folks  had  a 
blanket  it  was  tattered  and  filthy. 

"  I  saw  only  one  woman  in  all  these  cabins  whose 
face  did  not  look  sad  and  care-racked,  and  she  was 
dumb  and  idiotic. 

"  The  Irish  have  been  described  by  novelists  and 
travellers  as  a  light-hearted  and  rollicking  people, 
full  of  fun  and  quick  in  repartee,  equally  ready  to 
dance  or  to  fight.  I  did  not  find  them  so.  I  found 
them  in  the  West  of  Ireland  a  sad  and  despondent 
people,  careworn,  broken-hearted  and  shrouded  in 
gloom.  Never  once  in  the  hundreds  of  cabins  that 
I  entered — never  once,  even — did  I  catch  the  thrill 
of  a  merry  voice  or  the  light  of  a  joyous  eye.  Old 
men  and  boys,  old  women  and  girls,  young  men  and 
maidens — all  of  them,  without  a  solitary  exception — 
were  grave  or  haggard,  and  every  household  looked 
as  if  the  plague  of  the  first-born  had  smitten  them 


228  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM, 

that  hour.  Rachel  weeping  for  her  children  would 
have  passed  unnoticed  among  these  warm-hearted 
peasants,  or,  if  she  had  been  noticed,  they  would 
only  have  said,  *  She  is  one  of  us.'  A  home  with- 
out a  child  is  cheerless  enough,  but  here  is  a  whole 
land  without  a  child's  laugh  in  it.  Cabins  full  of 
children  and  no  boisterous  glee!  No  need  to  tell 
these  youngsters  to  be  quiet :  the  famine  has  tamed 
their  restless  spirits,  and  they  crouch  around  the  bit 
of  peat-fire  without  uttering  a  word.  Often  they  do 
not  look  a  second  time  at  the  stranger  who  comes 
into  their  desolate  cabin. 

"  My  personal  investigations  proved  that  the  mis- 
ery that  my  witnesses  have  outlined  is  not  excep- 
tional, but  representative ;  •  that  the  Irish  peasant  is 
neither  indolent  nor  improvident,  but  that  he  is  the 
victim  of  laws  without  mercy  that  without  mercy  are 
enforced ;  and  my  studies,  furthermore,  forced  me  to 
believe  that  the  poverty  I  saw,  and  the  sorrow  and 
the  wretchedness,  are  the  predetermined  results  of 
the  premeditated  policy  of  the  British  government 
in  Ireland  to  drive  her  people  into  exile.  This, 
also,  I  believe  and  say — that  Ireland  does  not  suffer 
because  of  over-population,  but  because  of  over- 
spoliation  ;  because  she  has  too  many  landlords  and 
not  enough  land-owners. 

"Americans  believe  that  it  is  England  that  rules 
Ireland,  and  that  the  Irish  in  Ireland  enjoy  the  same 
rights  that  the  English  enjoy  in  England.  The  be- 
lief is  an  error.     England  delegates  the  most  import- 


o 

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7^ 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  23 1 

ant  of  all  legislative  powers — the  power  of  taxation 
— to  the  absentee  landlord,  and  he  assigns  the  odious 
task  of  impoverishing  the  people  to  his  irresponsible 
agents. 

"  The  Irish  landlord  has  no  more  pity  for  his  ten- 
ant than  the  shark  has  for  the  children  of  the  sailor 
who  falls  between  his  jaws.  If  American  landlords, 
even  in  law-abiding  New  England,  were  to  act  as  the 
Irish  landlords  act,  they  would  perish  by  the  eager 
hands  of  vigilance  committees. 

"  From  1847  to  185 1  one  million  and  a  half  of  the 
Irish  people  perished  from  famine  and  the  fevers  that 
it  spawned.  This  appalling  crime  has  been  demon- 
strated by  a  man  whose  love  of  Ireland  no  man  ques- 
tioned, and  whose  knowledge  of  her  history  no  man 
doubted — John  Mitchel.  These  victims  of  landlord 
greed  and  British  power  were  as  deliberately  put  to 
death  as  if  each  one  of  them  had  been  forced  to 
mount  the  steps  of  a  scaffold.  And  why?  To  save 
a  worse  than  feudal  system  of  land  tenure,  for  it  is 
the  feudal  system  stripped  of  every  duty  that  feudal- 
ism recognized,  the  corpse  that  breeds  pestilence 
after  the  spirit  that  gave  protection  has  fled ;  a  feu- 
dal system  that  every  Christian  nation,  excepting 
England  only,  has  been  compelled  to  abolish  in  the 
interests  of  civilization." 

Another  witness  is  indeed  unnecessary;  but  an 
eviction-scene  which  the  bishop  of  Meath,  Right 
Rev.  Dr.  Nulty,  saw  is  so  representative  of  all  evic- 
tions that  this  record  would  not  be  complete  without 


232  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

it.  It  did  not  occur  under  Cromwell,  it  was  not  in 
1847;  its  date  is  1871 : 

"  In  the  very  first  year  of  our  ministry  as  a  mis- 
sionary-priest in  this  diocese  we  were  an  eye-witness 
of  a  cruel  and  inhuman  eviction  which  even  still 
makes  our  heart  bleed  as  often  as  we  allow  ourselves 
to  think  of  it.  Seven  hundred  human  beings  were 
driven  from  their  homes  in  one  day  and  set  adrift  on 
the  world  to  gratify  the  caprice  of  one  who,  before 
God  and  man,  probably  deserved  less  consideration 
than  the  last  and  least  of  them.  And  we  remember 
well  that  there  was  not  a  single  shilling  of  rent  due 
on  the  estate  at  the  time,  except  by  one  man ;  and 
the  character  and  acts  of  that  man  made  it  perfectly- 
clear  that  the  agent  and  himself  quite  understood 
each  other. 

"  The  crowbar  brigade,  employed  on  the  occasion 
to  extinguish  the  hearths  and  demolish  the  homes  of 
honest,  industrious  men,  worked  away  with  a  will  at 
their  awful  calling  until  evening.  At  length  an  inci- 
dent occurred  that  varied  the  monotony  of  the  grim, 
ghastly  ruin  which  they  were  spreading  all  around. 
They  stopped  suddenly,  and  recoiled  panic-stricken 
with  terror  from  two  dwellings  which  they  were  di- 
rected to  destroy  with  the  rest.  They  had  just 
learned  that  a  frightful  typhus-fever  held  those 
houses  in  its  grasp,  and  had  already  brought  pesti- 
lence and  death  to  their  inmates.  They  therefore 
supplicated  the  agent  to  spare  these  houses  a  little 
longer;  but  the  agent  was  inexorable,  and  insisted 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  233 

that  the  houses  should  come  down.  The  ingenuity 
with  which  he  extricated  himself  from  the  difficulties 
of  the  situation  was  characteristic  alike  of  the  heart- 
lessness  of  the  man  and  of  the  cruel  necessities  of 
the  work  in  which  he  was  engaged.  He  ordered  a 
large  winnowing-sheet  to  be  secured  over  the  beds 
in  which  the  fever-victims  lay — fortunately,  they  hap- 
pened to  be  perfectly  delirious  at  the  time — and  then 
directed  the  houses  to  be  unroofed  cautiously  and 
slowly ;  because,  he  said,  he  very  much  disliked  the 
bother  and  discomfort  of  a  coroner's  inquest.  I  ad- 
ministered the  last  sacrament  of  the  Church  to  four 
of  these  fever-victims  next  day,  and,  save  the  above- 
mentioned  winnowing-sheet,  there  was  not  then  a 
roof  nearer  to  me  than  the  canopy  of  heaven. 

"The  horrid  scenes  I  then  witnessed  I  must  re- 
member all  my  life  long.  The  wailing  of  women, 
the  screams,  the  terror,  the  consternation  of  children, 
the  speechless  agony  of  honest,  industrious  men, 
wrung  tears  of  grief  from  all  who  saw  them.  I 
saw  the  officers  and  men  of  a  large  police-force, 
who  were  obliged  to  attend  on  the  occasion,  cry 
like  children  at  beholding  the  cruel  sufferings  of 
the  very  people  whom  they  would  be  obliged  to 
butcher  had  they  offered  the  least  resistance.  The 
heavy  rains  that  usually  attend  the  autumnal  equi- 
noxes descended  in  cold  copious  torrents  through- 
out the  night,  and  at  once  revealed  to  those  houseless 
sufferers  the  awful  realities  of  their  condition.  I  vis- 
ited them  next  morning  and  rode  from  place  to  place. 


234  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

administering  to  them  all  the  comfort  and  consolation 
I  could.  The  appearance  of  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren as  they  emerged  from  the  ruins  of  their  former 
homes — saturated  with  rain,  blackened  and  besmeared 
with  soot,  shivering  in  every  member  from  cold  and 
misery — presented  positively  the  most  appalling  spec- 
tacle I  ever  looked  at.  The  landed  proprietors  in  a 
circle  all  around,  and  for  many  miles  in  every  direc- 
tion, warned  their  tenantry,  with  threats  of  their  direst 
vengeance,  against  the  humanity  of  extending  to  any 
of  them  the  hospitality  of  a  single  night's  shelter. 
Many  of  these  poor  people  were  unable  to  emigrate 
with  their  families,  while  at  home  the  hand  of  every 
man  was  thus  raised  against  them.  They  were  driven 
from  the  land  on  which  Providence  had  placed  them, 
and,  in  the  state  of  society  surrounding  them,  every 
other  walk  of  life  was  rigidly  closed  against  them. 
What  was  the  result?  After  battling  in  vain  with 
privation  and  pestilence  they  at  last  graduated  from 
the  workhouse  to  the  tomb,  and  in  a  little  more  than 
three  years  nearly  a  fourth  of  them  lay  quietly  in 
their  graves. 

"  The  eviction  which  I  have  thus  described,  and  of 
which  I  was  an  eye-witness,  must  not  be  considered 
an  isolated  exceptional  event  which  could  occur  only 
in  a  remote  locality  where  public  opinion  could  not 
reach  and  expose  it.  The  fact  is  quite  the  reverse. 
Every  county,  barony,  poor-law  union,  and  indeed 
every  parish  in  the  diocese,  is  perfectly  familiar  with 
evictions  that  are  oftentimes  surrounded  by  circum- 


PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM.  235 

stances  and  distinguished  by  traits  of  darker  and 
more  disgusting  atrocity.  Quite  near  the  town  in 
which  I  write  [MuUingar],  and  in  the  parish  in  which 
I  hve,  I  lately  passed  through  what  might  be  charac- 
terized as  a  wilderness,  in  which,  as  far  as  the  eye 
could  reach,  not  a  single  human  being  or  the  vestige 
of  a  human  habitation  was  anywhere  discernible.  It 
was  only  with  great  difficulty,  and  much  uncertainty 
too,  that  I  was  able  to  distinguish  the  spot  on  which 
till  lately  stood  one  of  the  most  respectable  houses 
of  this  parish.  A  few  miles  farther  on  I  fell  in  with 
the  scene  of  another  extensive  clearance,  in  which 
the  houses  that  had  sheltered  three  hundred  human 
beings  were  razed  to  the  ground  some  few  years 
ago.  That  same  proprietor  desolated,  in  an  adjoin- 
ing parish,  a  densely-populated  district  by  batches 
of  so  many  families  in  each  of  a  series  of  successive 
clearances.  Seventeen  families  formed  the  first 
batch." 

The  American  reader  will  ask,  Does  not  the  new 
Land  Act  abolish  such  scenes  for  ever?  It  does 
not,  as  will  be  shown  when  we  reach  the  terms  of 
that  measure.  Was  there  not  urgent  need  for  the 
Land  League?  The  proposition  the  League  made 
to  the  government  is  this:  That  the  government 
should  buy  out  the  landlords  at  a  fair  price,  then 
sell  the  lands  to  the  tenants  at  a  fair  price  and  give 
them  thirty-five  years  to  complete  their  payments, 
holding  a  first  mortgage  until  the  whole  sum  was 
paid,  with  interest.    Thus  the  landlords,  who  gen- 


236  PECULIAR  FEATURES  OF  LANDLORDISM. 

erally  got  the  lands  for  nothing,  and  who  have  been 
in  the  enjoyment  of  princely  incomes  from  them, 
would  lose  nothing  by  their  sale;  the  government 
would  lose  nothing;  while  the  now  poor  and  wretch- 
ed tenant  would  become  a  peasant  proprietor. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

THE  LANDLORDS  SOW  THE  SEED    OF  THE 
LAND  LEAGUE. 

IT  was  the  Irish  landlords  who  made  the  for- 
mation of  the  Land  League  inevitable.  The 
Gladstone  Land  Act  of  1870  was  intended  to  re- 
strain them,  but  it  was  a  law  of  excellent  intentions 
and  impotent  performance.  The  promise  it  made  to 
the  tenant's  wistful  ear  it  broke  to  his  sanguine  hope. 
The  biographer  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  George  Barnett 
Smith,  says  very  correctly :  "  It  did  not  confiscate  a 
single  valuable  right  of  the  Irish  landlord."  One 
valuable  right  of  the  Irish  landlord  was  to  raise 
rents  as  often  as  ht  pleased ;  another  was  to  expel  a 
tenant  and  his  family  whenever  he  pleased  ;  another 
was  to  confiscate,  without  compensation,  the  im 
provements  made  by  tenants  at  their  own  expense 
These  rights  they  exercised  with  uniform  energy 
during  the  years  1877,  1878,  1879  and  1880.  They 
succeeded  in  creating  another  famine,  in  which  there 
would  have  been  frightful  loss  of  life  had  not  the 
charity  of  the  world  poured  into  Ireland,  chiefly 
from  the  United  States,  to  save  the  stricken  ten- 
15  237 


238         THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE, 

antry.  It  was  not  food  that  was  sent,  it  was  money. 
The  money  did  not  go  to  the  tenantry  or  do  them 
any  permanent  good;  it  went  to  the  landlords;  it 
was  paid  to  them  for  food  for  the  tenants.  The 
food  had  been  produced  by  the  tenants,  but  they 
had  given  it  to  the  landlords  for  the  rent  of  their 
little  farms.  They  had  nothing  left  for  themselves 
but  the  potato,  and  the  potato  crop  failed. 

It  was  the  free  exercise  of  their  legal  rights  by 
the  landlords  during  these  three  years  which  re- 
sulted in  the  formation  of  the  Land  League.  The 
manner  in  which  the  rights  of  the  landlords  were 
exercised  is  most  graphically  described  in  a  series 
of  episodes  which  are  herewith  presented.  The 
newspapers  of  April  3,  1878,  contained  the  fol- 
lowing : 

"  On  the  2d  inst.  a  dreadful  event  occurred  in  a 
remote  part  of  the  North  of  Ireland  which  has  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  the  civilized  world.  On  that 
morning  an  old  and  haughty  nobleman,  the  earl  of 
Leitrim,  accompanied  by  his  clerk,  left  his  residence 
at  Milford  to  drive  to  Derry,  where  he  was  to  meet 
his  solicitor  and  settle  the  process  of  eviction  of 
eighty-nine  tenant-farmers  and  laborers  on  his  estates 
who  were  under  notice  to  quit.  The  earl  was  armed : 
he  always  carried  arms.  On  the  road  lay  men  driven 
to  desperation  by  the  earl's  grinding  cruelty.  When 
he  had  arrived  opposite  an  empty  cottage  from  which 
he  had  recently  evicted  a  poor  widow,  the  men  sprang 
forward  and  stopped  the  carriage.    A  terrible  strug- 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        239 

gle  ensued,  as  proved  by  the  marks ;  but  the  desperate 
assailants  were  the  victors.  The  earl  was  shot  through 
the  heart ;  his  arms  were  broken,  his  skull  shattered 
and  his  bleeding  body  flung  into  the  roadside  ditch, 
where  it  was  found.  The  clerk  and  driver  were  also 
shot  dead.  The  earl's  valet  was  driving  about  a  mile 
behind,  and  on  coming  up  found  his  master  and  the 
clerk  dead  on  the  road ;  life  was  still  in  the  driver. 
The  assassins  meanwhile  escaped  in  a  boat  across 
Mulroy  Bay.  The  valet  drove  back  to  Milford  and 
alarmed  the  police,  who,  coming  to  the  place,  found 
the  driver  alive,  but  ynconscious.  He  died  shortly 
afterward.  The  London  Times'  editorial  says :  *  The 
news  of  the  murder  of  the  earl  of  Leitrim  has  struck 
this  country  with  as  much  pain  and  amazement  as  an 
unprovoked  declaration  of  war.' 

"  The  earl  of  Leitrim  was  well  known  as  a  landlord 
whose  ideas  of  the  rights  of  property  prompted  him 
to  stretch  the  powers  given  him  by  the  law  to  the 
utmost  limit,  and  who  was  therefore  extremely  un- 
popular with  his  tenantry  and  with  the  small-farmer 
class  generally.  For  over  twenty-five  years  he  had 
been  consolidating  farms,  evicting  tenants  and  turn- 
ing his  lands  into  immense  grass-farms.  He  owned 
immense  tracts  of  land  in  the  counties  of  Donegal, 
Leitrim  and  Derry,  as  well  as  a  small  estate  in  Kil- 
dare,  and  probably  evicted  more  tenants  in  his  life- 
time than  any  man  in  Ireland.  Hundreds  of  sturdy 
Presbyterian  farmers  now  settled  in  Ohio,  Indiana 
and  Illinois,  as  well  as  Catholics,  were  forced  to  give 


240        THE  SEED    OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE, 

Up  their  homes  in  Donegal  and  emigrate.  It  was  his 
habit  to  act  as  his  own  bailiff,  and  on  horseback, 
alone  and  armed  to  the  teeth,  to  carry  out  those  pro- 
cesses of  law  which  even  under  the  severest  necessity 
are  so  painful  to  a  tender  nature.  His  tenantry  in 
Leitrim  and  Galway  bore  with  his  savage  freaks  with 
the  greatest  forbearance,  believing  him  to  be  irrespon- 
sible for  many  of  his  acts.  But  to  Derry,  where  this 
murder  was  committed,  he  was  comparatively  a  stran- 
ger, his  property  there  being  very  small ;  and  it  will 
doubtless  be  found  he  has  committed  some  terrible 
act  of  tyranny  to  provoke  such  a  crime  in  a  region 
in  which  agrarian  outrage  has  hitherto  been  wholly 
unknown.  It  is  told  of  him  that  his  favorite  phrase 
in  dismissing  any  appeal  made  to  him  was  to  bid  the 
applicant '  Go  to  hell  or  to  America !' 

"  On  more  than  one  occasion,  also,  he  appeared  at 
the  local  petty  sessions  in  cases  which  aroused  con- 
siderable popular  indignation  and  gained  him  a  great 
deal  of  newspaper  notoriety.  Many  of  his  tenantry 
live  on  the  rocky  coast  of  the  Atlantic,  where  the  soil 
is  very  poor,  and  eke  out  a  miserable  existence,  part- 
ly by  fishing,  partly  by  gathering  kelp  on  the  sea- 
shore, which  is  sold  for  manufacturing  purposes. 
The  right  to  gather  this  kelp  had  been  exercised 
from  time  immemorial  by  the  tenantry,  but  some 
years  ago  Lord  Leitrim  and  a  few  other  landlords 
claimed  the  kelp  as  the  property  of  the  landlord,  and 
in  cases  where  he  found  them  gathering  it  had  them 
arrested  for  theft.     The  irritation  caused  by  these 


THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        24I 

petty  prosecutions  was  very  deep,  and  extended  over 
many  parts  of  Ireland  not  immediately  affected  by  the 
litigation.  His  father  had  been  a  mild  landlord  and 
a  very  popular  man,  and  great  expectations  were 
formed  of  the  son  when,  in  1854,  he  succeeded  to 
the  title  and  estates.  The  family  seats  are  at  Lough 
Rynn,  Dromod,  County  Donegal,  and  Killadoon, 
Celbridge,  County  Kildare.  The  family  originally 
obtained  from  James  I.  large  tracts  of  confiscated 
land,  and  the  earl  who  has  just  been  murdered  added 
largely  to  his  estates  by  purchase.  The  earl  was  un- 
married. 

"  The  earl  of  Leitrim  was  possessed  of  vast  estates 
in  the  counties  of  Londonderry,  Sligo,  Donegal  and 
Leitrim.  The  town  of  Lififord  in  the  first-named, 
and  the  towns  of  Manorhamilton  and  Mohill  in  the 
last-named,  county  were  his  property.  He  never  em- 
ployed an  agent  to  collect  the  rents  of  his  immense 
possessions,  but  managed  all  himself  with  the  assist- 
ance of  the  unfortunate  clerk  who  shared  his  tragic 
fate.  When  his  tenants  went  to  pay  their  rents  to 
him,  they  approached  him  with  fear  and  trembling, 
as  he  made  it  a  rule  to  treat  them  like  dogs.  No 
kind  or  encouraging  word  ever  escaped  his  lips  to 
the  poor  struggling  slaves  that  contributed  his  prince- 
ly income.  If  a  poor  tenant  had  not  the  full  amount 
of  his  rent  on  the  appointed  day  for  collecting  it,  and 
asked  his  hard  taskmaster  for  a  few  days  to  make  up 
the  remainder,  he  would  not  grant  him  an  hour,  but 
would  immediately  hand  him  over  to  his  lawyer,  who 


242         THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

would  have  his  effects  seized  upon  by  the  bailiffa 
Many  a  poor  man,  with  his  wife  and  children,  he 
drove  from  the  house  which  their  industry  had  built, 
and  from  the  farm  which  their  toil  had  cultivated  and 
reclaimed  from  a  barren  morass  to  a  fertile  plain. 
There  never  has  been  six  months  since  the  passing 
of  the  Irish  Land  Act  of  1 870  without  Lord  Leitrim's 
name  appearing  more  than  once  in  the  law-courts  as 
the  plaintiff  in  ejectment  cases.  He  made  several 
futile  attempts  in  the  House  of  Lords  to  nullify  the 
act.  He  said  upon  one  of  these  occasions:  *  The 
Land  Act  of  Mr.  Gladstone  has  confiscated  my  prop- 
erty.' Some  years  ago  a  steward  of  his  named  Wil- 
son was  shot  at  in  the  county  Donegal  and  maimed 
so  badly  that  he  is  a  cripple  for  life.  Wilson  had 
been  engaged  in  putting  some  of  His  Lordship's 
tyrannical  evictions  into  execution  when  he  was  fired 
at.  The  seat  at  Lough  Rynn  was  the  deceased  no- 
bleman's favorite  place  of  residence.  The  house — or 
castle,  as  it  is  called — is  built  upon  an  island  in  Lough 
Rynn,  and  the  communication  with  the  main-land  is 
by  a  drawbridge.  He  had  the  island  fortified  and 
defended  with  cannon,  making  it  look  more  like  the 
stronghold  of  a  feudal  baron  of  the  Middle  Ages  than 
the  residence  of  a  nobleman  of  the  latter  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century." 

Rewards  were  offered  for  the  apprehension  of  the 
assassins,  and  several  men  were  af;-ested,  tried  and 
acquitted,  there  being  no  evidence  connecting  them 
with  the  deed. 


THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        243 

It  transpired,  after  ample  investigation,  that  the 
death  of  the  earl  was  not  due  to  agrarian  causes. 
He  had  baser  passions  than  avarice  and  malignity : 
he  was  bestial  as  well  as  brutal,  and  had  invaded 
many  humble  and  virtuous  families.  The  brother 
of  one  of  his  victims,  a  young  man  who  had  been 
driven  from  his  native  land  and  was  toiling  in  the 
United  States,  learning  of  his  sister's  dishonor,  took 
ship,  waited  for  his  opportunity,  and  returned  to  his 
exile. 

During  the  previous  winter  the  Freeman's  journal 
of  Dublin  sent  a  correspondent  to  the  Galtee  Moun- 
tains to  investigate  rumors  of  famine  and  evictions. 
The  following  is  his  report : 

"  MiTCHELSTOWN,  CHRISTMAS  EvE. — Mr.  Patten 
Smith  Bridge  told  Lord  Chief-Justice  May  that  the 
whole  five  hundred  and  seventeen  tenants  who  pop- 
ulate the  twenty-two  thousand  acres  of  mountain  and 
lowland  under  his  sway  had  already  settled  except 
forty-seven,  and  he  had  reason  to  believe  that  they 
would  be  *  settled  *  when  he  went  home.  There  was 
laughter  in  court  at  this.  I  do  not  know  whether  it 
was  intended  for  grim  humor,  but  the  settlement  has 
taken  the  form  of  a  sheaf  of  processes  of  ejectment  for 
the  January  sessions  in  Clonmel.  Mr.  Bridge  has  left 
the  Galtees  for  the  Christmas  holidays,  and,  however 
it  may  have  been  in  the  castle,  it  must  be  owned  that 
in  the  cabins  s'igled  out  for  the  process-server's  vis- 
its, as  well  as  in  those  which  are  spareci  for  another 
sessions,  the  season  of  Christmas  peace  and  pleasure 


244        I'HE  SEED    OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE, 

has  little  meaning  around  the  Galtees.  The  exact 
number  of  processes  served  I  have  yet  to  cast  up 
one  by  one  as  I  visit  the  holdings,  but  it  is  certain 
that  a  selection  of  the  recalcitrants  has  been  made, 
and  that  a  large  section  of  those  who  did  not,  and 
declare  they  cannot,  accept  the  revaluation  have  been 
respited,  for  reasons  quite  beyond  their  own  compre- 
hension. The  question  then  comes  to  be  once  more 
of  cruel  urgency,  Is  this  whole  wail  over  the  Galtee 
tenantry  a  gigantic  conspiracy  against  truth,  or  is  it 
the  cry  of  honest  industry  driven  to  despair  ?  Has 
public  sympathy  been  trifled  with,  or  has  it  only  been 
half  aroused  ?  Have  we  here  a  cunning  and  secre- 
tive peasantry,  with  rags  on  their  backs  and  gold  in 
the  thatch,  striving  to  shelter  themselves  by  a  parade 
of  mendicancy  and  filth  from  paying  the  honest  value 
of  their  holdings,  or  are  they  really  a  race  of  humble 
toilers  whose  sweat  and  substance  has  wrung — alas ! 
not  even  bread,  but — sustenance  from  the  barren 
bosom  of  mountains  and  fens;  who  have  waged  a 
lifelong  battle  for  existence  against  rocks  and  hea- 
ther, against  a  subsoil  of  sandy  mud,  against  Nature 
in  her  stubbornest  and  most  grudging  mood;  and 
who  to-day  find  themselves  face  to  face  with  strangers 
who  have  appropriated  and  trafficked  in  their  im- 
provements, and  sentenced  them  to  rents  which  will, 
in  due  process  of  law,  chase  them  from  the  fields  they 
have  created?  Is  their  case,  in  fact,  a  libel  upon  a 
good  landlord  and  a  conscientious  agent,  or  is  it  a 
damning  proof  that  under  the  aegis  of  the  Land  Act 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE,        245 

Irish  tenants  still  owe  it  to  the  mercy  of  their  mas- 
ters that  they  are  not  stripped  of  all  that  a  life's  in- 
dustry has  laid  up  for  their  declining  days,  and  sent 
upon  the  world  with  only  the  consolation  of  a  legal 
viaticum  ?  It  will  be  the  business  of  these  letters  to 
make  some  small  contribution  of  evidence  upon  this 
head,  such  as  a  person  quite  severed  from  the  dis- 
pute, who  uses  his  eyes  and  ears  cautiously  and 
friankly  describes  his  experiences,  may  glean  from 
careful  investigation  on  the  spot  There  is  no  dis- 
guising the  diffidence  with  which  I  commence  the 
task.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  pretend  to  review  the 
revaluation  further  than  the  facts,  when  brought  to- 
gether, may  affect  it ;  and  even  an  inquiry  into  the 
actual  condition  of  a  community  spread  over  a  tract 
of  wild  hills  some  thirty  miles  round — where  there 
are  so  many  diversities  in  the  quality  of  soil  and  stock 
and  habitations  and  so  many  exaggerations  on  both 
sides  to  be  discounted — is  beset  with  difficulties,  the 
more  especially  that,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  sequel,  Mr. 
Bridge's  explanations  of  what  I  may  see  are  denied 
one.  The  dread  that  any  inaccurate  statement  or  in- 
cautious word  of  mine  may  be  twisted  to  the  disad- 
vantage of  creatures  whom  I  have  seen  bowed  to  the 
verge  of  despair  weighs  even  more  heavily  than  the 
consciousness  that  every  sentence  is  written  under  the 
sword  of  a  capricious  law.  My  plan  is,  however,  a 
humble  one.  It  is  to  visit  personally  not  only  the 
doomed  homesteads,  but  as  large  a  proportion  as  pos- 
sible of  all  others  lying  in  my  track  over  the  estate, 


246        THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

townland  by  townland;  to  describe  the  peasants* 
homes  and  mode  of  life ;  to  satisfy  myself,  as  far  as 
a  layman  may,  of  the  nature  and  value  of  their  crops ; 
to  see  their  stock  for  myself,  and  see  what  quality  of 
land  is  this  for  which  a  few  shillings  an  acre  is  a  rack- 
rent.  The  facts  thus  collected  I  shall  first  embody 
in  as  plain  and  succinct  a  narrative  as  may  be.  Af- 
terward I  shall  state  the  impressions  left  upon  my 
own  mind,  leaving  it  to  the  judgment  of  sober  pub- 
lic opinion  to  say  whether  they  shall  have  been  jus- 
tified by  dry  facts. 

"The  townland  of  Skeheenarinka  extends  from 
the  little  village-cross  of  that  name  over  the  crest  of 
a  bare  hump  of  mountain  rising  to  a  height  that  must 
be  quite  two  thousand  feet  above  the  sea-level,  con- 
sidering that  Galteemore,  which  rises  just  behind  and 
does  not  greatly  overtop  it,  is  three  thousand  and 
twelve.  Neither  of  the  peaks  looks  nearly  so  high 
from  the  level  of  the  adjoining  village.  On  the 
southern  slope,  where  the  sun  most  rests,  the  face 
of  the  hill  is  scored  with  great  stone  fences,  marking 
out,  terrace  above  terrace,  the  patches  of  reclaimed 
land,  until  they  merge  in  an  untamable  belt  of  hea- 
ther not  a  stone's-throw  from  the  top.  I  saw  it  on 
Sunday  at  its  best,  when  scarcely  a  breeze  stirred 
below  and  it  was  lighted  by  a  sun  of  very  unusual 
brilliancy  for  the  winter  solstice — when,  too,  the 
houses  and  the  people  were  in  their  Sunday  trim 
and  the  cattle  basking  in  unwonted  warmth.  My 
visit  was   made,  I  need   scarcely  say,  without  the 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        249 

smallest  previous  notice.  It  will  be  readily  under- 
stood, also,  that,  even  if  a  perfect  stranger  could  have 
threaded  his  way  alone  through  a  maze  of  mountain- 
borheens,  he  could  not  have  penetrated  for  a  moment 
the  suspicious  reticence  natural  to  people  under  the 
pressure  of  heavy  calamity  without  the  passport  of  a 
familiar  face. 

"  I  was  happy  enough  in  this  respect  to  have  ob- 
tained the  guidance  of  the  Very  Rev.  Dr.  Delany, 
P.  P.,  of  Ballyporeen.  His  wide  parish  embraces 
most  of  the  Buckley  estates,  and  his  great  heart 
all  their  misery.  Many  a  time  during  the  day,  as 
he  struck  a  faint  track  across  some  remote  glen  or 
greeted  some  astonished  mountaineer  with  a  remind- 
er that  he  had  not  been  to  mass  that  day,  his  cheery 
smile,  his  gentle  reproof,  his  word  of  comfort,  his 
complete  knowledge  of  everybody's  little  troubles, 
and  the  whole-souled  confidence  with  which  his  in- 
terest was  repaid,  recalled  the  best  that  I  had  ever 
heard  or  read  of  the  relations  of  an  Irish  priest  with 
his  people.  The  dogs  in  remote  highland  cabins 
knew  him,  while  they  barked  at  me.  *Will  I  tell 
him,  dochtor?'  asked  one  old  fellow  whom  I  was 
questioning  about  his  relations  with  Mr.  Bridge. 
And  when  the  approval  was  smilingly  given,  he 
who  had  been  taciturn  as  Jules  Verne's  Phineas 
Fogg  grew  as  voluble  as  the  small  dressmaker  in 
Little  Dorrit, 

"At  the  foot  of  the  mountain,  where  the  path 
begins  to  be  steep,  we  entered  a  thatched  cabin  by 

16 


250        THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE, 

the  roadside,  in  front  of  which,  as  is  usual  with  cot- 
tiers of  the  more  wretched  class,  a  foul  pit  of  liquid 
manure  was  smoking.  A  man  with  his  head  between 
his  hands  was  bent  over  the  fire,  and  a  few  children 
stuck  in  the  chimney-corner.  The  man  started  to 
his  feet  with  a  guilty  look  as  the  priest  entered ;  he 
was  tall  and  strong-limbed,  but  had  a  cowed  and 
haggard  face.  *  You  weren't  at  mass  this  morning, 
Mick.'  The  man  turned  up  his  broken  shoes,  which 
had  not,  indeed,  troubled  shoemaker  or  shoeblack 
for  many  a  day ;  he  had  no  coat,  a  flannel  waistcoat 
and  a  brown  jerry  hat,  and  his  shirt  was  not  clean, 
though  it  was  Sunday.  Let  me  say  here  that  in 
at  least  half  a  dozen  other  instances  during  the  day 
we  came  across  similar  tenants  with  similar  excuses ; 
and  I  do  not  think  it  was  home  attractions  that  kept 
those  men  in  those  noisome  dens  poring  over  the 
fire  while  the  sun  was  shining  and  their  neighbors 
going  to  mass.  This  was  Michael  Dwyer,  and  he 
had  one  of  the  processes  of  ejectment  behind  the 
dresser.  *  It  is  the  only  Christmas-box  we  got  yet, 
God  help  us !'  said  an  old  man,  later  in  the  day,  who 
had  been  similarly  served.  A  pot  was  boiling  on  the 
fire.  It  contained  potatoes,  the  Sunday  dinner  of  the 
family,  ten  of  them  all  told.  I  took  up  some  of  the 
potatoes  lying  in  a  heap  in  the  corner;  they  were 
many  of  them  rotten,  all  of  them  wet  and  miserably 
small.  Several  of  them  I  could  bruise  into  pulp  be- 
tween my  fingers.  And  these  were  grown  on  low 
lands,  in  a  field  that  looked  as  rich  as  the  best  of  its 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        25 1 

neighbors.  Potatoes  have  been  bad  everywhere  this 
year;  but  these  are  not  like  any  other  potatoes  I 
ever  saw,  except  those  picked  out  as  refuse  for  the 
pigs  in  more  favored  spots.  I  have  not  yet  seen  in 
Skeheenarinka  a  single  potato  as  large  as  an  orange. 
"  The  cabin  forms  but  one  chamber,  in  which  the 
whole  family  of  ten  are  somehow^  accommodated  by 
night.  There  were  two  bedsteads;  what  the  other 
arrangements  are  I  dare  not  guess.  This  man's  hold- 
ing is  measured  at  four  acres  one  rod,  of  which  the 
old  rent  was  £i  2s.  4d.  and  the  new  £\  15s.  His 
own  belief  (which,  of  course,  goes  for  what  it  is 
worth)  is  that  the  four  acres  include  large  patches 
which  were  taken  from  him  to  be  attached  to  the 
schoolhouse.  I  only  mention  it  as  one  of  several 
cases  in  which  the  tenants  profess  themselves  satisfied 
that  a  new  survey  would  show  them  to  be  charged 
(not,  of  course,  wilfully)  with  more  land  than  they 
occupy.  Dwyer  states  he  twice  offered  Mr.  Bridge 
the  increased  rent  in  full,  and  it  would  not  be  taken 
unless  he  signed  an  agreement  as  tenant  from  year 
to  year.  He  was  employed  as  quarryman  by  Mr. 
Bridge  up  to  the  time  of  these  troubles,  and  he  states 
that  he  was  not  only  then  disemployed,  but  that 
another  tenant — John  Jackson — had  refused  to  em- 
ploy him,  alleging  instructions  which  I  cannot,  with- 
out more  authority,  give  currency  to.  His  whole 
tillage  this  year  was  one  acre  of  potatoes,  and  of 
these  not  six  baskets  were  left  on  Sunday.  His 
whole  stock  is,  in  his  own  words,  ^  one  old  cow  that 


252         THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

my  wife  bought  for  twenty-five  shillings.'  I  saw  the 
old  cow  grazing  in  the  best  field  in  solitary  majesty, 
and,  though  she  was  decidedly  a  bargain  at  the  money, 
I  doubt  whether  she  would  bring  double  the  price 
this  moment  in  any  market  in  Munster.  Cheek  by 
jowl  with  this  grassy  field,  lying  flat  beside  it,  sep- 
arated only  by  a  fence,  lay  a  tract  of  virgin  moor 
covered  with  stunted  heather  and  interspaces  of 
utterly  barren  sand,  with  here  and  there  a  tuft  of 
yellowish  grass — a  not  inapt  picture,  even  in  quite 
civilized  latitudes,  of  what  the  land  was  and  what 
the  patient  dint  of  industry  had  made  it.  This,  then, 
being  the  sum  of  Dwyer's  ways  and  means,  it  only 
remained  for  him  to  show  that  he  is  twenty-one 
pounds  indebted  to  the  bank  to  convince  me  that, 
assuming  his  figures  to  be  correct,  the  farm  would 
not,  as  he  himself  put  it,  give  a  meal  of  yellow  stir- 
about to  ten  Christians,  only  that  he  ekes  out  his 
means  by  doing  jobs  as  road-contractor. 

"  A  pair  of  horses  well  skilled  in  mountain-climb- 
ing awaited  us  on  the  borheen  outside,  for  the  owner 
of  the  post-car  had  made  a  special  clause  the  pre- 
vious day  against  trusting  his  vehicle  into  the  by- 
roads. For  a  couple  of  hundred  feet  we  ascended  a 
rough  but  fairly  passable  mountain-path  some  eight 
feet  wide.  Thence  to  the  top  it  grew  more  and  more 
contracted  and  jagged,  as  if  the  mountain-streams 
had  in  winter  coursed  down  the  centre  and  torn  a 
channel  for  themselves,  and  very  quickly  the  horses 
had  to  pick  their  steps  in  single  file.     Our  second 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        253 

Visit  was  to  the  house  of  Patrick  Burke,  about  the 
level  of  Galtee  Castle,  which  lay  in  its  body-guard 
of  woods  a  little  to  our  left.  Burke's  old  rent  for  a 
farm  that  he  believes  to  be  about  sixteen  acres  was 
;^4  1 8s.  /d. :  it  has  been  raised  to  £Z,  There  has 
been  no  movement  whatever  toward  a  settlement 
since  the  trial;  yet,  to  his  amazement,  no  process 
of  ejectment  has  been  served  upon  him.  He  was  at 
mass  when  we  called.  His  wife  appeared  as  wretched 
as  if  the  process  had  already  come.  The  cabin,  poor 
as  it  was,  had  the  earthen  floor  neatly  swept  and  the 
dresser  of  blue  delft  shining.  A  streak  of  green  slime 
came  down  the  wall  where  the  rain  trickled  down 
and  collected  in  a  hole  in  the  floor,  out  of  which  it 
had  to  be  baled  with  a  cup ;  '  and  if  you  scrubbed  it 
three  times  a  day,  you  could  not  keep  the  floor  dry 
under  you.'  The  five  members  of  the  family  sleep 
in  two  beds  in  the  bedroom,  whose  poverty  she 
shrank  from  exposing,  but  stated  they  had  to  put 
a  sop  of  straw  under  their  feet  to  keep  the  floor  dry. 
"This  class  of  accommodation — which  may  be 
taken  as  a  fair  average  of  the  mountain-cabins,  ex- 
cept that  I  saw  only  three  others  in  which  the  rain 
penetrated  the  dwelling-house  to  any  appreciable  ex- 
tent— is  what  I  have  generally  found  in  the  cabins  of 
the  poorest  sort  of  laborers  elsewhere,  neither  better 
nor  worse,  but  the  den  in  which  three  people  are 
huddled  together  in  the  adjoining  cow-house  is  an 
outrage  upon  civilization.  I  had  to  stoop  on  enter- 
ing its  crazy  door,  and  as  soon  as  I  could  make  out 
16 


254         THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE, 

anything  in  the  gloom  (for  it  is  neither  lifted  by 
window  nor  ventilated  by  chimney)  I  discovered  that 
I  stood  up  to  my  ankles  in  a  foetid  pool  of  rain-water 
mixed  with  the  droppings  of  cattle.  Propped  up  on 
wattles  in  a  corner  of  this  stifling  den  was  a  filthy 
bag  of  straw  littered  with  some  foul  rags  and  a  tat- 
tered coverlid,  and  here  I  was  gravely,  but  with  man- 
ifest shame,  assured  that  a  man,  with  his  wife  and 
daughter,  sleeps  nightly,  while  the  cow  lies  down  in 
the  sodden  manure  beside  them ! 

"  I  met  this  wretched  wife  (whose  clothing  by  day 
was  all  but  as  scanty  as  by  night)  coming  down  the 
mountain  barefooted  as  we  were  leaving.  She  was 
radiant  with  thankfulness.  She  was  after  begging  a 
mess  of  Indian  meal  from  a  neighbor  for  the  Sunday 
banquet  of  herself,  her  husband  and  daughter,  and  she 
had  it  rolled  up  in  her  red  cotton  handkerchief.  And 
she  thanked  God  more  fervently,  I  am  afraid,  than 
most  of  us  do  for  merry  Christmas  dinners.  But 
she  had  another  cause  of  joy  :  she  held  out  triumph- 
antly to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Delany  an  American  letter  she 
had  just  received,  with  an  enclosure  of  £\  from  her 
daughter  in  distant  New  Haven,  Connecticut. 

"  But  to  return  to  her  landlady,  Mrs.  Burke,  who 
was  herself  without  a  dress  and  only  wore  torn  blue 
flannel  petticoats.  Her  own  blanket  is  pledged  for 
7s.  *  When  we  were  married  the  poor  man's  coat 
was  in  pawn,  and  I  had  to  pledge  one  of  my  own 
dresses  that  I  got  in  service  to  release  it  for  the  wed- 
ding ;  but,  sure,  it  went  again,  and  we  never  saw  the 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND   LEAGUE.        255 

sight  o?  it  since.  He  got  a  present  of  a  coat  six 
years  ago  from  a  neighboring  man,  and  there  it  is 
to  this  day.  And,  as  God  is  my  judge,'  she  cried, 
vehemently,  *  I  never  saw  that  man  drunk !' 

*'  I  went  out  upon  the  farm,  and  saw  it  dug  in  sev- 
eral places.  It  really  looked  one  of  the  best  hold- 
inofs  on  the  mountain  at  that  elevation.  Yet  even  in 
the  lowest  parts  there  was  a  tract  of  wet  rea,  and  the 
upper  border  was  still  thick  with  stones  and  heath. 
Two  large  fields  were  red  with  potatoes,  and  I  counted 
six  pits.  One  of  the  fields,  said  Mrs.  Burke,  was  sub- 
let as  a  garden  for  ;^i  a  year.  In  his  affidavit  her 
husband  swore  he  would  not  get  £i  for  the  grazing 
of  his  whole  farm.  I  drove  the  spade  some  eight 
inches  into  the  upper  potato-field ;  after  two  efforts 
I  brought  up  about  four  inches  of  dark  soil,  beneath 
which  there  was  a  miserable  compost  of  wet  sand 
perfectly  incapable  of  secreting  the  moisture  that 
trickles  down  eternally  from  the  heights.  At  an- 
other trial  I  broke — spade,  not  ground.  The  upper 
part  of  this  field  was  still  dotted  with  boulders  and 
scrubby  patches  returning  to  or  never  wholly  recov- 
ered from  wilderness,  and  this  season's  crop  of  stones 
(the  only  bounteous  crop  on  Skeheenarinka)  lay  thick 
around.  They  never,  since  the  famine  years,  had 
enough  potatoes  to  carry  them  through  the  year, 
said  Mrs.  Burke,  and  she  would  be  very  proud  if 
they  held  during  the  winter  this  season.  They  sowed 
five  barrels  of  oats,  for  the  seed  of  which  they  paid 
£d^  los. ;    upon  this  and  other  crops  they  put  two 


256         THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

bags  of  superphosphate,  at  2 is.  the  bag.  They  paid 
7s,  a  day,  with  diet,  for  ploughing  and  harrowing  (for 
only  two  farmers  on  the  mountain  whom  I  met  had 
either  a  horse  or  a  plough);  they  paid  a  half-sov- 
ereign for  mowing,  and  she  showed  me  the  note  from 
Mr.  Sam  Burke  of  Cahir,  to  whom  her  husband  sold 
all  but  five  barrels  of  the  oats  for  £6  is.  6d.  Three 
small  cocks  of  oaten  straw,  however,  remain,  as  cat- 
tle-food. They  tried  quarter  of  an  acre  of  turnips. 
*  We  could  not  get  a  mess  for  the  cow  out  of  them,' 
was  Mrs.  Burke's  summary  of  the  result. 

"The  stock  transactions  are  more  extraordinary 
still.  There  is  a  cow,  a  heifer,  *  an  old  sheep  that  I 
offered  yesterday  for  half  a  sovereign,'  a  lamb  and  a 
goat.  Her  husband  bought  a  cow  on  May  23  for 
£\'^  lOs.  on  credit,  and  had  to  sell  her  again  for  £Z 
when  his  creditors  clamored  for  payment  The  pres- 
ent cow  was  bought  in  Mitchelstown  on  January  10, 
two  years  ago,  for  £(^  17s.  6d.,  of  which  £^  is  still 
due.  All  this  is,  of  course,  mere  ex-parte  statement, 
as  is  the  assertion  that  a  debt  of  £60  is  hanging  over 
their  cabin — that  '  they  were  always  living  on  credit, 
but  there  is  no  credit  to  be  had  now  since  this  man 
came  down  on  us.'  Bills  in  the  bank  and  private 
bills  were  shown  me,  but  perhaps  it  is  of  somewhat 
more  importance  that  when  I  questioned  the  husband 
some  hours  later,  in  a  distant  part  of  the  townland, 
his  answers  tallied  almost  exactly  with  his  wife's,  save 
that  he  mentioned  two  sheep  where  she  had  only 
mentioned  one.     Burke  brought  forward  at  the  same 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        259 

time  a  man  who  said  he  had  been  his  security  for  the 
price  of  one  of  the  cattle,  and  said  he  had  to  give 
the  cows  bran  every  day  in  the  year,  or  they  would 
run  dry.  When  questioned  as  to  the  cost  of  the 
bran,  he  said  he  did  not  know  how  much  a  hundred- 
weight it  was,  as  he  got  it  *  on  time,'  but  he  made  the 
very  questionable  statement  that  his  cattle  used  half 
a  hundredweight  per  week — say  3s.  6d.  worth.  *  How 
much  money  have  you  in  bank  now  ?' — '  God  help 
me,  I  have  plenty  of  it  to  pay  there !'  was  the  im- 
mediate response. 

*•  One  word  more  of  Mrs.  Burke.  I  spoke  of 
Christmas.  She  pointed  to  a  neck  of  mutton,  about 
three  pounds  of  it,  that  hung  over  the  fireplace.  This 
was  to  be  the  Christmas  dinner  of  the  family.  *  'Tis 
only  four  or  five  times  in  the  year  we  get  that  same, 
and  then  'tis  only  a  pig's  heart  or  a  bone  of  pork  that 
we  could  get  cheap  for  a  festival.' 

"At  the  other  side  of  the  borheen  lives  one  of  the 
*  settled '  tenants,  the  most  wretched  I  had  met  yet. 
This  is  the  woman,  Johanna  Fitzgerald,  whose  hus- 
band has  gone  to  England  as  a  laborer  to  earn  bread 
for  her  four  children.  Mrs.  Fitzgerald  had  not  been 
seen  at  the  chapel  that  morning,  but  her  bare  feet 
and  coarse  petticoat  made  a  pretty  eloquent  apology. 
The  children,  who  played  about  the  door,  had  clean 
faces  and  clean  rags,  and  the  earthen  floor  was  new- 
ly swept  A  mess  of  Indian  meal  was  in  the  pot  for 
dinner.  The  family,  of  course,  slept  in  one  room; 
and  a  man  and  wife,  who  are  lodged  in  consideration 


26o        THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

of  help  on  the  farm,  stretched  by  night  on  the  floor 
inside  the  doorway.  Except  a  few  blue  plates  the 
dresser  was  stocked  only  with  marmalade  pots, 
whose  contents  were  never  emptied  on  the  Galtees. 
Mrs.  Fitzgerald  said  she  had  not  heard  from  her 
husband  these  five  weeks,  and  a  shilling  was  all  the 
money  she  had  in  the  world.  Her  rent  was  raised 
from  £2  I  OS.  4d.  to  £^  4s.  Her  stock  of  potatoes 
was  out  this  month  past,  *  except  a  handful  of  seed,' 
and  from  this  to  August  yellow  stirabout  must  be 
bought  on  credit.  Her  other  tillage  was  half  an  acre 
of  oats,  which  cost  her  £i  for  seed,  7s.  for  labor,  and 
IDS.  for  a  hundredweight  of  superphosphate  (which 
she  has  not  paid  for  yet).  The  whole  crop  was  sold 
to  James  Fitzgerald,  a  neighbor,  for  £2,  straw  and 
all.  Two  geese  and  some  hens  made  the  total  of 
her  livestock.  It  was  pitiful  to  see  the  open-mouth- 
ed surprise  with  which  a  woman  supposed  to  be  the 
mistress  of  some  twenty  acres  gloated  over  the  couple 
of  pieces  of  small  silver  given  to  the  children,  the 
eagerness  with  which  she  pounced  upon  them,  and 
the  extravagant  thanks  with  which  she  repaid  them. 
"  An  ascent  of  ten  minutes  more  brought  us  to  a 
point  at  which  we  had  to  dismount  and  toil  across  a 
rocky  track,  while  the  horses  were  led  by  an  easier 
path  higher  up  the  mountain.  We  were  upon  the 
farm  of  Darby  Mahony,  and  our  way  lay  across  a 
stony  field  upon  which  the  process  of  reclamation 
had  commenced.  Long  rows  of  tough  scraws  delved 
out  of  the  heather  lay  with  the  heath  turned  down- 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        26 1 

ward  for  burning,  and  the  best  side  uppermost.  Any- 
thing like  soil  was  not  three  inches  deep ;  patches  of 
verdure,  however,  appeared  elsewhere  in  the  field. 
Great  heaps  of  sandstone  were  collected  in  the  cen- 
tre, which  had  been  dug  out  with  crowbars,  and  were 
waiting  to  be  smashed  with  a  sledge-hammer  pre- 
vious to  either  being  piled  on  the  fences  or  the  big- 
gest of  them  buried  underground.  All  the  fences 
on  this  part  of  the  mountain  are  built  stouter  than 
Roscommon  stone  walls,  with  the  boulders  dug  out 
of  the  fields.  *  Sure,  we  would  not  mind,'  said  Darby 
Mahony,  *  if  they  let  us  alone ;  but  we  have  no  sort 
of  spirit  to  root  a  stone  or  put  on  a  bit  of  thatch, 
owing  to  this  man  always  promising  to  turn  us  out' 
His  son  is  a  powerfully-built  young  man — a  patient 
and  hard-working  drudge,  I  can  easily  believe — but 
dulled  and  broken-spirited  as  I  have  seen  few  young 
men  at  his  age. 

"  Mahony  has  been  served  with  a  process  of  eject- 
ment. His  rent  was  raised  from  £2  to  £/^y  and  he 
says,  '  If  I  was  obliged  to  go  into  the  poorhouse,  I 
could  not  pay  it'  So  strongly  persuaded  is  he  that 
the  measurement  of  i6a.  ir.  27p.  is  double  the  ex- 
tent of  his  actual  holding  that,  according  to  his  own 
statement,  he  waited  on  Mr.  Bridge  twice  with  an 
:ffer  to  pay  the  expense  of  a  survey  himself  if  he 
should  turn  out  to  be  wrong,  Mr.  Bridge  paying  the 
expense  in  the  other  event ;  the  answer  was  that  no 
credit  would  be  allowed  for  a  survey,  and  none  was 
made.     The  bulk  of  his  farm  is  semi-reclaimed  pas- 


262         THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

ture,  but  the  rest  melts  into  the  unbroken  mass  of 
rock  and  heather  which  crowns  the  mountains. 
'What's  there  is  but  httle/  said  the  tenant,  *  but 
whatever  is  there  we  made  it.' — '  I  am  old  enough 
to  recollect/  said  another  old  fellow,  who  had  been 
to  the  metropolis  during  the  late  trial,  *  when  you 
might  as  well  graze  a  cow  down  the  middle  of  Sack- 
ville  street  as  turn  her  loose  on  that  mountain.' 

"  Mahony  tilled  altogether  two  acres  this  season  : 
so  his  statement  runs.  He  paid  £\  for  seed-oats  for 
half  an  acre,  and  7s.  for  the  plough.  Yet  he  never 
threshed  a  grain,  and  a  swathe  which  he  pulled  out 
of  a  stack  showed  the  ears  had  never  filled,  while  the 
straw  was  scarcely  a  foot  long  at  its  best.  His  live- 
stock is  made  up  of  two  cows  and  a  stripper,  two 
yearlings,  a  donkey,  a  sow,  with  eleven  bonnives,  and 
one  sheep  *  nearly  as  old  as  himself  I  saw  this  gaunt 
and  ragged  bellwether  toddling  among  the  stones, 
and,  making  the  usual  allowance  for  exaggerated 
language,  it  was  a  miserable  mountaineer.  Mahony 
says  he  gets  but  two  and  a  half  pounds  of  wool  off 
her  yearly,  and  that  these  are  expended  in  knitting 
stockings.  The  cattle  are  average  mountain-cattle, 
and  an  affidavit  made  by  Mahony's  son  states  that  a 
firkin  and  a  half  of  butter  per  dairy-cow  is  their  ut- 
most produce,  with  constant  hand-feeding. 

"  The  cabin  and  its  appointments  are  of  the  aver- 
age poverty  and  cleanliness.  The  out-office  is  tot- 
tering and  covered  with  rotten  thatch,  through  which 
the  green  trail  of  the  water  runs  down  the  walls — ^a 


THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE.        263 

cosey  shelter  for  dairy-cattle  during  the  week  or  fort- 
night yearly  when  the  farm  is  snowed  up. 

"  The  Rev.  Dr.  Delany  rallied  the  old  fellow  on  a 
congenial  topic  when  he  pointed  to  the  distant  Com- 
meragh  Mountains  and  said,  '  Darby,  the  O'Mahonys 
were  not  always  on  the  top  of  Skeheenarinka.'  But, 
proud  as  the  little  old  man  is  of  his  sept  and  its 
glories,  he  was  not  to  be  roused;  he  shook  his  head 
heedlessly,  and  pulled  out  a  notice  of  a  bill  in  the 
bank  for  £6,  to  be  met  the  next  day,  while  he  had 
not  half  the  amount.  He  made  me  out  in  Mitchels- 
town  to-day  to  show  that  he  had  discharged  the  debt 
by  borrowing  the  money  from  a  neighbor.  A  horse, 
he  asserted,  would  not  draw  more  than  four  hundred- 
weight to  the  height  of  his  farm,  and  the  horse  would 
cost  4s.  a  day. 

"  Michael  Regan's  is  the  adjoining  farm,  verging 
on  the  top,  in  character  almost  exactly  the  same,  and 
in  extent  about  47  acres,  as  he  himself  roughs  it — 
74a.  2r.  3  5 p.  statute  measure,  according  to  the  figures 
in  the  valuation.  He  also  has  been  served  with  an 
ejectment.  His  rent  was  raised  from  £^  9s.  6d.  to 
£\^  i6s.  6d.  He  was  out  when  we  called,  and,  al- 
though he  came  into  Mitchelstown  to-day  to  proffer 
me  his  statement,  inasmuch  as  his  evidence  was  ex- 
tracted, no  doubt  fully,  at  the  trial,  I  do  not  care  to 
return  to  it  further  than  to  say  he  swore  that  he  had 
ten  children ;  that  his  father  and  himself  built  the 
house  and  reclaimed  the  land;  and  that  his  stock 
consisted  of  six  mountain-cows,  six  yearlings,  three 


264         THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

calves,  a  horse,  ten  sheep,  two  pigs  and  nine  bon- 
nives. 

"  Close  by  lives  the  widow  English,  whose  rent 
was  raised  from  19s.  to  £2  is.,  and  who,  although 
she  has  accepted  the  new  tariff  from  the  beginning, 
is  as  poorly  housed  and  as  earnest  as  any  of  her 
neighbors  in  declaring  that  the  farm  would  not  give 
them  stirabout  only  that  two  of  her  sons  have  been 
taken  into  the  employment  of  Mr.  Bridge.  One  of 
her  sons  fills  poor  Hyland's  place  as  coachman  at 
a  wage  of  los.  a  week,  without  diet  or  other  per- 
quisites than  clothes,  and  his  brother  is  a  laborer  on 
the  same  terms. 

"  The  next  cabin  on  our  way  was  that  of  another 
of  the  arranging  tenants,  Edmund  Fitzgerald,  who 
accepted  an  increase  from  ;^i  7s.  6d.  to  £2  17s.  6d. 
Not  a  soul  was  within  except  four  pretty  children, 
the  eldest  of  whom  was  not  six  years  old.  Three 
of  the  little  creatures  were  stowed  into  a  high  wooden 
cradle,  in  which  they  were  rocking  themselves  joy- 
ously at  some  distance  from  the  fire,  while  the  eldest, 
with  the  aid  of  a  big  dog,  was  gravely  mounting 
guard  over  the  tiny  trio  in  the  cradle.  The  place 
was  scrupulously  clean ;  there  were  even  touches  of 
a  rude  elegance  here  and  there.  The  bedroom  had 
been  roughly  boarded  in  the  good  old  times,  though 
the  timber  was  in  many  spots  displaced  or  rotting 
of  age  and  damp.  The  bed-furniture,  though  poor, 
was  clean.  A  half-pint  champagne-bottle  trans- 
formed  into    a    medicine-bottle   was   on  the  shelf. 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE,        26$ 

Imagine  the  adventures  of  that  bottle  from  the 
moment  it  was  primed  with  glowing  liquor  in 
some  sunny  vineyard  of  the  Vosges  until  fate  made 
it  the  receptacle  of  castor-oil  in  a  thatched  cabin  on 
Skeheenarinka !  There  was  a  little  fireplace  also  in 
this  bedroom,  and  on  the  mantelpiece  two  plaster-of- 
paris  statuettes  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  the  solitary 
representatives  of  the  fine  arts  that  have  yet  crossed 
my  view.  Yet  the  young  mistress  of  the  house,  whom 
we  met  in  the  borheen,  a  tidily- dressed,  fair-faced, 
though  careworn  housewife,  looked  and  spoke  as 
despondingly  as  if  her  fate  too  were  to  be  decided 
at  the  Clonmel  sessions. 

"  We  were  now  able  to  resume  the  saddle  for  a 
ride  through  a  narrow  and  broken  causeway,  bor- 
dered by  a  deep  channel,  around  the  shoulder  of  the 
mountain,  where  the  sight  of  the  cultivated  plains 
disappeared,  and  we  were  gazing  into  the  gloomy 
and  forbidding  chasms  that  opened  between  Lyreen 
and  the  bold  front  of  Galteemore — places  where  the 
gamekeeper  and  a  stray  sportsman  alone  penetrate. 

"  Here  I  came  across  a  farmer  with  the  only  good 
frieze  coat  I  saw  on  the  mountain.  This  was  Patrick 
Slattery,  whose  farm  in  parts  looks  warmer,  and  is,  at 
all  events,  better  cultivated,  than  those  of  his  neigh- 
bors. He  has  accepted  the  increased  valuation,  and 
says  he  can  pay  it  but  badly.  For  forty-one  years  all 
his  labor  and  capital  have  gone  into  the  land,  and,  to 
use  his  own  words,  '  it  was  a  fright  to  look  at  when  I 
came  there.' 


266         THE   SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

"  Slattery's  next  neighbor,  Patrick  Carroll,  who 
came  up  in  flannel  jacket  and  shabby  hat  while  we 
were  speaking,  made  a  sad  contrast.  '  He  is  the  most 
industrious  creature  on  the  mountain,'  said  Slattery. 
Carroll's  holding  is  one  of  the  highest,  and  his  soil 
the  most  thankless.  The  heather  makes  constant  in- 
roads upon  his  pasture-lands,  and  I  saw  one  field  off 
which  he  had  himself  built  up  a  thick  and  almost 
continuous  wall  of  large  stones  five  feet  high.  His 
rent  had  been  raised  from  ;£"3  8s.  to  ^8  7s.  6d.  He 
has  not  settled,  and  says  he  cannot ;  but  no  process 
of  ejectment  has  yet  been  served.  He  spoke  in  a 
tone  of  indescribable  wretchedness  of  his  outlook. 
His  oats  this  season  cost  him  i6s.  a  barrel  for  five 
barrels  of  seed,  upon  credit;  he  paid  /s.  a  day  for 
the  ploughing,  with  oats  for  the  horse  and  bread, 
butter  and  tea  for  the  ploughman  (for  in  those  re- 
gions the  ploughman  is  a  superior  being);  yet  he 
never  threshed  the  crop.  The  potatoes,  upon  which 
he  spent  £^  in  manure,  will  last  him  three  months 
more.  '  Yellow  meal  from  that  to  August,  and  where 
will  I  get  the  price  of  it  ?'  His  fields  are  grazed  by 
three  milking-cows,  a  heifer  and  two  calves — nothing 
more.  His  dairy  transactions  for  the  year  were  these: 
three  firkins  of  butter  (three  quarters),  two  of  which 
he  sold  in  Mitchelstown  for  £}^  apiece,  and  the  third, 
which  he  sent  to  Cork,  returned  him  but  £2  14s. 
profit. 

"  Striking  a  faint  and  boggy  track  across  the  hea- 
ther, we  passed  sheer  over  the  summit  of  the  mountjain. 


THE  SEED   OF  THE   LAND  LEAGUE.        269 

turning  our  backs  upon  that  dismal  congress  of  glens 
and  precipices  known  in  old  topography  by  the  cru- 
elly-ironic name  of  Paradise,  and  descending  by  a 
new  system  of  dry  watercourses  upon  the  townland 
of  Coolegarranroe.  The  portion  of  it  over  which  we 
had  time  to  range  before  darkness  descended  covers 
the  face  of  a  sister-ridge  to  that  of  Skeheenarinka, 
sloping  upward,  with  somewhat  better-sheltered  pas- 
ture-lands, to  a  point  at  which  its  crest  rises  precip- 
itously like  a  wall  of  rock.  The  cattle  here  bore 
marks  of  better  feeding,  but  the  oat  and  potato  crops 
were,  if  anything,  more  blighted. 

"  Michael  Noonan  is  one  of  those  who  have  bowed 
under  the  valuation.  His  rent  was  raised  from  £2 
14s.  to  £^  14s.,  and  he  has  undertaken  to  pay  it, 
'  though  God  knows  I  might  as  well  pay  for  my  own 
coffin.'  I  spoke  with  his  sick  wife  as  she  stood  at  the 
door  of  her  miserable  cabin,  which  is  sunk  in  a  crev- 
ice of  the  hill,  with  rain-marks  coursing  down  the 
walls  within  and  the  usual  slough  of  rotting  abom- 
inations steaming  in  front.  She  spoke  of  her  affairs 
in  a  mood  of  settled  despondency,  as  of  a  fate  which 
it  were  hopeless  to  expect  to  better.  Her  husband 
has  three  strippers  and  two  calves.  *We  did  not  get 
two  firkins  of  butter  out  of  the  three  of  them,  and  we 
have  not  a  supper  of  potatoes  in  the  house.  Every 
meal  we  eat  from  this  out  will  be  on  credit,  and  no- 
body gives  us  credit  now  that  can  help  it.'  The  tot- 
tering little  cow-house  is  her  dairy.  'We  would  not 
make  the  bit  of  butter  at  all,  only  the  doctor,  when 
17 


2/0         THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

he  said  mass  here,  brought  us  luck ;  but,  sure,  what 
is  the  use  of  it  all  ?*  Her  husband  we  met  crossing 
the  fields  shortly  after,  and  he  pointed  out  in  the  mid- 
dle of  his  pasturage  a  wall  of  stones — some  of  them 
seemingly  half  a  ton  in  weight — which  had  been  rolled 
down  from  the  higher  ground  after  being  rooted  by 
his  own  hand. 

"  Thomas  Kearney's  farm  of  105a.  3  5  p.,  upon 
which  the  rent  has  been  raised  from  £^  12s.  6d.  to 
;f  17  I  OS.,  lies  close  by,  part  of  it  smothered  with 
heath,  part  laid  down  in  scanty  but  fairly  sweet  grass, 
and  16  acres  of  light,  cold  soil  on  an  exposed  slope, 
with  a  subsoil  of  sand  and  marl  reddened  for  tillage. 
Kearney  has  been  served  with  an  ejectment.  I  saw 
his  seven  cows.  '  I  wish  I  took  them  up  to  Dublin 
to  give  evidence  in  place  of  myself,'  Kearney  re- 
marked as  he  pointed  to  his  gaunt  and  shrunken 
stock.  They  were  really  poor  mountain-cattle.  He 
states  that  he  made  six  firkins  of  butter  this  season, 
which  fetched  £1  5  s.  to  ;^3  6s.  per  firkin.  '  Put 
against  that,*  he  added,  *  that  I  must  buy  hay  and 
hand-feed  them  from  the  1st  of  November  to  the 
15th  of  May,  or  they  would  die  in  the  cold.'  The 
rest  of  his  stock  comprises  twelve  sheep,  six  heifers 
and  two  sows — those  which  he  told  the  Dublin  jury 
would  frighten  them  to  look  at.  Upon  cross-exam- 
ination in  Dublin  he  admitted  that  he  made  up  a  for- 
tune of  £Zo  for  his  daughter  and  paid  ;^38  for  the 
interest  of  part  of  his  holdings.  Yet  this  lord  of  a 
hundred  acres  was  dressed  in  flannel,  and  his  family 


T1JE   SEED   OF   THE   LAND   LEAGUE.        2/1 

of  ten  souls  were  after  a  dinner  of  Indian  meal  and 
will  be  so  regaled  for  nine  months  to  come.  His 
potatoes  are  gone,  and  his  oats  were  never  threshed. 

"  Terence  Murphy,  Sn,  is  another  of  those  under 
process  of  ejectment.  He  holds  14a.  ir.  I4p.  statute 
measure,  the  poor-law  valuation  of  which  is  ;^3  los., 
the  old  rent  £^  15s.,  and  the  new  demand  £'j  7s. 
His  farming  operations  have  been  these :  An  acre  of 
potatoes  cost  him  ;^4  8s.,  paid  for  seed  to  James 
Neill,  £\  paid  for  ploughing,  and  £^  los.  for  eleven 
hundredweight  of  special  manure,  still  unpaid  for. 
He  will  have  potatoes  for  six  weeks  to  come,  and 
the  rest  must  be  reserved  for  seed.  He  put  down 
two  barrels  of  seed-oats,  which  the  neighbors  sowed 
gratis  in  return  for  like  little  services  done  by  him, 
and  never  threshed  a  grain  of  it.  His  livestock  is 
made  up  of  three  dairy-cows  and  three  goats — nei- 
ther sheep  nor  lamb  nor  donkey.  His  butter  is  sold 
in  lumps.  His  family  circle  numbers  seven,  and 
counts  absent  ones  in  America  and  Australia. 

"Maurice  Gorman  has  a  lease  of  116  acres.*  He 
is  tenant  from  year  to  year  of  another  holding  of 
29a.  ir.  2ip.,  and  from  this  he  is  under  notice  of 
ejectment.  Gorman  appeared  to  be  one  of  the  strong 
farmers  of  the  mountain — one  who  was  not  likely, 
therefore,  to  let  any  plot  of  land  slip  through  his 
fingers  for  the  sake  of  two  guineas  a  year  if  any 
profit  were  to  be  had  by  keeping  it.  The  holding 
now  in  question  is  perched  highest  upon  the  Galtee 
range,  and  is  grazed  only  by  cows.     It  has  not  been 


^72         THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

broken  for  twelve  years,  and  is  fast  sinking  back 
into  barrenness.  The  man  whom  Gorman  succeed- 
ed in  possession  made  his  Hving  by  cutting  turf  and 
selhng  heath  for  Htter.  The  rent  used  to  be  £2  2s., 
and  was  fixed  by  Mr.  Walker  at  ;^4  4s. 

"  The  short  day  was  already  near  its  death  when 
we  recrossed  to  Skeheenarinka.  Our  passage  lay 
across  a  steep  and  rocky  gorge  between  whose  jag- 
ged sides  tumbles  down  a  mountain-stream  which 
might  easily  enough  become  a  torrent.  This  is  the 
precipice  to  the  brink  of  which  Denis  Murphy  in- 
vited the  lord  chief-justice,  with  the  promise  of  a 
*  Niagara  megrim,'  and  in  sober  earnest  a  few  days 
after  the  trial  a  neighboring  tenant  named  Thomas 
Leonard  was  precipitated  down  the  gorge,  and  lies 
abed  to  this  day  with  his  injuries.  I  did  not  experi- 
ence any  American  variety  of  dizziness  in  the  pas- 
sage, but  I  would  have  thought  twice  of  clambering 
up  the  opposite  height  without  a  safe  guide  or  in 
wet  weather. 

"  We  had  only  daylight  for  two  visits  more.  One 
was  to  the  house  of  William  Neill,  who  has  been 
under  notice  to  quit,  but  has  for  the  moment  been 
spared  process  of  eviction.  Another  cleanly  little 
peasant  home  is  this,  and  another  half  dozen  deject- 
ed people  inhabit  it.  Neill  has  a  horse,  which,  ac- 
cording to  his  own  assertion,  must  be  fed  on  kindlier 
soil  than  his.  The  story  of  his  tillage  experiments 
is  the  same  tale  of  blight  and  loss  that  was  dinned 
into  my  ears  in  every  cabin  on  the  mountain.     He 


THE   SEED    OF   THE   LAND   LEAGUE.        2/3 

has  a  milch-cow  and  three  heifers.  He  offered  the 
cow  at  the  last  fair  of  Ballyporeen  for  £2,  and  no- 
body closed  with  him. 

"  Maurice  Fitzgerald  is  under  process  of  eject- 
ment. He  holds  15  statute  acres,  the  old  rent  of 
which  was  £i  i8s.  6d.,  and  the  new  demand  £6  los. 
He  offered  Mr.  Bridge  £4.  in  vain.  His  crop  of  oats 
was  sown  under  the  double  advantage  of  having  the 
seed  himself  and  having  the  ploughing  done  by  his 
neighbors ;  yet  he  exhibited  the  note  from  Mr.  Burke 
of  Cahir  for  £1  i8s.  5d.  for  the  crop,  less  about  ten 
stone,  reserved  for  himself.  He  has  to  pay  Lord 
Lismore  for  the  grazing  of  his  six  sheep  and  six 
lambs.  The  dairy-stock  comprises  three  milch- 
cows,  with  a  heifer  in  calf  The  produce  last  season 
was  four  firkins  of  butter,  to  make  up  the  fourth  of 
which  Mrs.  Burke  had  to  purchase  fifteen  pounds. 
Two  of  these  fetched  £2,  9s.,  and  the  two  others, 
sold  in  Cork,  yielded  a  united  profit  of  ;^5  12s.  6d. 

"  Thus  far  a  first  excursion  around  Skeheenarinka. 
Great  portion  of  it  has  yet  to  be  traversed  before 
turning  to  the  five  or  six  other  townlands  embraced 
in  the  estate." 

"  I  thought  it  my  dut>''  to  repair  to-day  to  the 
Mountain  Lodge  to  lay  before  Mr.  Bridge,  if  he 
should  be  so  minded,  a  frank  statement  of  what  I 
had  heard  and  seen,  and  to  receive  with  scrupulous 
respect  whatever  denial  or  correction  he  should  have 
wished  to  see  placed  side  by  side  with  evidences  in- 


2/4         THE   SEED   OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE. 

evitably  tinged  with  onesidedness.  Owing  to  his 
departure  to  Roscrea  for  the  Christmas  hohdays, 
this  intention  has  been  frustrated,  and  these  sheets 
must  go  forth  without  the  possible  explanations 
which  I  know  you  will  readily  give  Mr.  Bridge  an 
opportunity  most  fully  of  making.  The  Mountain 
Lodge  is  picturesquely  seated  on  a  sunny  south- 
ern slope  overlooking  a  picturesque  wooded  gorge, 
through  which  the  meandering  course  of  the  Pun- 
cheon marks  the  division  between  Limerick  and 
Tipperary,  opening  on  one  side  over  the  far-reach- 
ing plains  bounded  by  the  Knockmeldown  Moun- 
tains, and  upon  the  other  side  into  the  gloomy  heart 
of  the  Galtees.  It  is  approached  by  a  long  by-road 
outside  the  village  of  Kilbeheny. 

"  At  the  base  of  the  mountain  lies  the  model  farm 
of  the  estate — that  of  Mr.  Holywell,  the  only  Eng- 
lish tenant,  I  believe,  on  the  property,  and  manifest- 
ly the  most  skilled  agriculturist.  But,  then,  his  fields 
are  the  fat  of  the  lowlands,  and  were  thoroughly 
drained  at  the  expense  of  the  land  company  before 
Mr.  Holywell  set  foot  there.  His  farmhouse  is  a 
little  mansion  fronted  by  a  well-timbered  lawn  and 
backed  by  extensive  slated  stables,  barns  and  out- 
offices.  His  cattle  and  his  tillage  are  of  a  totally 
different  order  from  any  other  I  have  seen  upon  the 
estate.  Both  are  excellent,  and  do  him  infinite 
credit.  Higher  up  there  are  large  nurseries  of 
young  firs,  larches  and  beech  trees,  with  which  Mr. 
Bridge  carried  on  an  extensive  system  of  plantations 


THE   SEED   OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE.         275 

on  the  mountain-sides.  His  own  avenue  is  thrown 
open  to  the  many,  for  whom  it  is  a  short-cut  into 
the  glens.  The  way  is  bordered  on  each  side  by 
dense  clumps  of  rhododendrons,  whose  flowers,  in 
hundreds  of  thousands,  make  this,  I  am  told,  in 
summer,  another  Pass  of  Roses.  The  avenue  winds 
steeply  up  until  a  bend  brings  one  in  full  view  of 
the  Lodge  in  its  eyrie  on  the  Tipperary  side  of  the 
river.  It  is  in  winter  a  lonesome-looking  place,  but 
the  elements  of  theatric  scenery  lie  all  round,  and 
the  woods  are  richly  stocked  with  pheasants,  hares, 
woodcocks  and  the  numerous  herds  of  wild  deer 
that  infest  the  heights  of  the  Galtees.  The  Lodge 
is  a  plain  sandstone,  two-story  building,  with  a  short, 
foolscap  tower,  on  a  little  gravelled  plateau. 

"  The  iron  hut  in  which  Mr.  Bridge's  body-guard 
of  constabulary,  under  command  of  Constable  Car- 
raher,  are  housed,  is  pitched  in  the  yard  to  the  rear, 
between  the  Lodge  and  the  woods,  which  stretch 
over  the  mountain  toward  Tipperary.  It  is  a  low, 
squat,  iron-proof  compartment,  in  which  three  of 
the  men  have  their  hammocks  swung.  Their  meals 
are  cooked  in  a  wooden  hut  facing  it,  and  their  com- 
rades sleep  in  an  adjoining  stable. 

"As  I  rapped  at  the  hall-door  of  the  Lodge  an 
affectionate  little  beagle  rushed  up  to  be  fondled. 
The  servant  from  whom  I  inquired  whether  I  could 
see  Mr.  Bridge  informed  me  that  he  had  left  for 
Roscrea  two  days  before,  and  would  not  be  back 
before  Monday  next.     To  the  suggestion  that  I  might 


276         THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND   LEAGUE. 

leave  my  card  to  say  who  called,  I  replied  that  it  was 
not  necessary. 

"  As  I  jumped  on  the  car  the  head-bailifif,  O'Logh- 
len,  sprang  out  of  the  house^  bareheaded  and  some- 
what flurried,  and  commenced  to  gyrate  around  me 
in  a  very  amusing  way.  I  found  it  necessary  to  in- 
quire whether  there  was  anything  I  could  do  for  him. 
Very  sheepishly  he  replied, 

"'I  thought  you  wanted  to  see  Mr.  Bridge,  sir.' 

" '  Well  ?' 

"'  Mr.  Bridge  is  from  home,  sir.' 

" '  Well  ?' 

"  He  stopped  for  a  moment  hesitatingly : 

"  '  I  think,  sir,  it  would  be  well  you  left  your  name, 
to  let  him  know  who  called.' 

'♦'I  don't.' 

"  Mr.  O'Loghlen  moved  backward,  and  the  car 
forward.  It  had  not  gone  far  down  the  avenue  when 
the  coachman  was  at  our  back  on  horseback,  and  I 
hear  that  my  visit  to  Mountain  Lodge  is  exercising 
the  curiosity  of  some  of  the  authorities  there  mightily 
these  leisure  times. 

"  It  is  stated  that  altogether  twenty-six  processes 
of  ejectment  have  been  served,  but  I  have  as  yet 
traced  only  sixteen.  Two  more  of  the  tenants  have 
settled.  The  rest  declare  that  acceptance  of  the  re- 
valuation is  impossible.  Snow  is  falling  to-night  on 
the  mountains." 

In  September,  1879,  the  same  journal  sent  a  com- 
missioner to  Mayo.     The  estate  visited  was  that  of 


THE   SEED    OF  THE   LAND  LEAGUE.         2/9 

the  earl  of  Lucan,  who  owns  sixty  thousand  acres. 
He  is  an  absentee  landlord;  he  goes  to  the  estate 
twice  a  year  to  collect  his  rents.  None  of  the 
money  goes  back  to  the  country.  The  commis- 
sioner reports : 

"  In  order  to  the  understanding  of  the  thoughts 
which  in  this  hour  of  their  misery  are  fermenting  in 
the  Irish  farmers'  minds,  there  are  certain  phases  of 
the  past  which  will  not  brook  concealment.  The 
peasant  who  passes  along  the  cheerless  road  from 
Castlebar  to  near  Westport  cannot  choose  but  think 
that  he  is,  as  it  were,  traversing  a  cemetery  of  dead 
villages  among  the  undistinguishable  homesteads  of 
thousands  who  appear  there  no  more.  These  are  the 
bleak  monuments  of  '  the  famine  clearances.'  It  is 
only  old  inhabitants  who  can  identify  even  the  sites 
of  villages  such  as  the  Kilvrees,  Caillogue,  Cloghcr- 
nach,  Clugan,  Rahinbar,  Derryharney,  Corhue,  Bohess 
and  Lapplagh,  which  used  to  send  forth  their  thou- 
sands to  O'Connell's  monster  meetings  less  than 
forty  years  ago.  The  thousands  rotted  of  hunger, 
died  in  the  ditches,  were  flung  overboard  the  fever- 
ships  or  *  went  with  a  vengeance '  to  the  ends  of  the 
world.  A  few  thorn-bushes,  a  clump  of  trees  or  a 
naked  gable-wall  here  and  there  are  the  only  grave- 
stones of  those  buried  villages.  The  very  stones 
of  their  huts  are  built  into  the  roadside  walls,  as 
though  to  obliterate  all  traces  of  the  dark  events  that 
levelled  them.  An  Irish-American  who  revisited  this 
desolate  district  a  few  days  ago,  after  thirty  years' 


28o         THE   SEED    OF   THE  LAND   LEAGUE. 

absence,  was  for  days  poking  through  the  country 
without  discovering  any  old  friend  or  landmarks  ex- 
cept the  graveyard,  and  he  said  bitterly  he  wondered 
they  had  not  turned  that  too  into  grazing-ground. 
To  show  that  I  do  not  exaggerate,  one  parish  which 
I  could  name  once  supported  one  thousand  eight 
hundred  families ;  it  counts  six  hundred  now.  An- 
other, farther  westward,  has  had  its  population  shorn 
down  from  two  thousand  two  hundred  to  seven  hun- 
dred. And  the  peasants,  who  told  me  they  remem- 
bered seeing  the  roof-trees  sawn  through  and  hear- 
ing the  thud  of  the  crowbar,  remarked  with  bitterness 
that  every  spot  which  nature  or  the  labor  of  genera- 
tions of  tenants  had  rendered  fertile  was  appropriated 
to  the  bullocks  and  sheep  of  the  lords  of  the  soil, 
while  the  remnant  of  the  small  holders  (except  those 
who  were  safe  in  the  possession  of  ancient  leases) 
were  driven  into  swamps  to  commence  their  weary 
work  of  reclamation  anew. 

" '  This  makes  the  madmen  who  have  made  men  mad 
By  their  contagion.' 

"The  merchants  of  Westport  had  precisely  the 
same  dejected  tale  to  tell  as  the  merchants  of  Castle- 
bar.  One  of  them,  as  I  have  already  told  you,  who 
could  only  collect  fifteen  per  cent,  on  his  last  year's 
debts,  has  had  to  increase  them  this  year  to  five  thou- 
sand pounds.  Another  has  distributed  eight  thou- 
sand five  hundred  pounds'  worth  of  Indian  meal  on 
credit,  another  over  four  thousand  pounds'  worth,  and 


THE   SEED   OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE.        28 1 

SO  on  through  every  shopkeeper  or  wayside  huckster 
in  or  around  the  place. 

"  In  a  potato-plot  underneath  Croagh  Patrick  we 
stopped  to  talk  to  a  poor  old  fellow  bent  and  shaking 
who  was  digging  potatoes  in  a  field  of  flourishing- 
looking  stalks.  These  imposing-looking  fat  stalks,  I 
am  sorry  to  say,  when  they  were  dug  out,  had  only 
a  small  and  wet  and  scanty  family  of  potatoes  at  their 
roots,  and  it  took  a  long  strip  of  ground  to  furnish 
the  poor  old  fellow's  basket  for  dinner.  *  But,  God 
be  praised  1  they  might  be  worse,'  and  *  Who  knows 
what  God  is  doing  for  us,  if  it  howlds  dry  for  another 
while  ?' — it  had  been  '  howlding  wet '  with  a  vengeance 
for  eighteen  consecutive  hours  previously — and  *  May- 
be we'd  reap  the  oats  about  Michaelmas,  if  there's 
any  ripening,'  were  his  dismal  consolations.  For  all 
his  clinging  to  hope,  I  don't  think  his  hope  was  much 
in  this  world ;  and  as  he  stood  there  with  his  arms 
crossed  on  the  head  of  his  spade^  and  told  us  that  he 
paid  six  pounds  a  year  for  two  acres  of  land  to  a  mid- 
dleman, that  he  owed  a  year's  rent  and  had  not  a 
halfpenny  to  pay  it,  that  he  owed  for  eleven  bags  of 
meal,  which  had  supported  him  since  Christmas,  that 
his  share  of  two  pounds  of  pork  on  Christmas  day 
was  the  only  element  of  variety  in  his  dietary  since, 
as  he  rubbed  his  hand  wearily  across  his  forehead 
and  recalled  all  the  years  of  famine  and  struggle  and 
hopeless  slavery  that  had  gone  over  his  head  in  this 
forgotten  spot,  and,  looking  across  the  hill,  fixed  his 
eyes  upon  the  place  where  the  village  of  Thornhill 


282         THE  SEED    OF   THE   LAND    LEAGUE, 

had  stood,  and  stands  no  longer,  and,  striving  to  look 
on  into  the  future,  could  only  draw  his  arm  across 
his  eyes  and  shake  his  head, — I  longed  for  some 
power  of  pencil  or  lens  that  would  fix  him  as  he 
stood  as  an  image  of  the  fate  of  the  Irish  small 
farmer. 

*'  A  ragged  old  woman  in  a  shred  of  red  petticoat, 
and  with  a  certain  air  of  sunny  resignation  under  all 
her  yellow  wrinkles,  came  up  while  we  were  speak- 
ing. She  had  been  paying  ten  pounds  a  year  for  a 
plot  of  land.  Being  unable  to  scrape  together  the 
rent,  she  was  forced  to  surrender  the  land,  and  was 
now  living,  God  knows  how,  with  a  disabled  husband 
in  a  dark  little  cabin  by  the  roadside,  the  rent  of 
which  she  is  obliged  to  pay  by  giving  up  one  day's 
labor  in  the  week  for  the  benefit  of  a  mighty  lord. 
Just  as  we  parted,  three  policemen  in  their  fine  clothes 
strolled  in  superb  idleness  down  the  road,  the  only 
other  creatures  visible  in  the  silent  gray  landscape. 
If  I  were  a  great  painter,  I  would  spend  half  a  life 
trying  to  realize  that  scene. 

"  Some  miles  farther  on,  where  a  belt  of  Sir  Roger 
Palmer's  property  (which  runs  in  a  broken,  zig-zag 
line  through  some  thirty  miles  of  country  from  near 
Croagh  Patrick  to  near  Killala,  eiglity-one  thousand 
acres  in  all)  again  intersects  the  road  at  Lecanvey, 
we  met  numbers  of  the  tenantry.  They  all  owed  a 
year's  rent  at  least,  and  were  hopelessly  crushed 
down  with  other  debts.  *  We  have  not  a  shilling  if 
it  were  to  save  us  from  starvation,'  exclaimed  one 


THE  SEED    OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE.        283 

*  They  might  as  well  put  a  rope  around  our  necks  at 
wanst  as  ask  us  for  it,'  said  Number  Two.  And  a 
third,  with  a  vehement  oath,  declared  that  the  people 
would  have  been  dead  and  rotten  long  ago  only  for 
the  charity  of  the  Westport  merchant  and  a  local 
trader,  whom  the  man  named  with  flashing  eyes. 
The  agent  gave  them  time  until  August  to  pay  the 
November  rents.  His  reckoning  was  that  the  cottier- 
farmers,  who  almost  universally  throughout  this 
country-side  go  to  England  yearly  to  reap  the  har- 
vest and  return  in  time  to  reap  their  own,  would 
have  ere  that  time  earned  sufficient  tribute  for  the 
landlord. 

"  But  even  here  misfortune  dogged  their  wretched 
steps.  The  labor  market  in  England  is  flooded  with 
hands  from  other  depressed  industries;  besides  that, 
there,  too,  the  harvest  is  late  and  bad.  The  poor 
Irish  harvester  is  crowded  out.  I  am  told  at  the 
post-offices  that  the  post-office  orders  sent  home 
hitherto  have  not  amounted  to  more  than  a  quarter 
of  the  usual  average.  I  am  told  in  the  cabins  that 
many  of  the  harvesters  are  sick  or  idle  in  the  great 
English  cities,  applying  at  the  workhouse-gates  for 
passage  home. 

"  The  little  village  of  Louisburg,  down  by  the  At- 
lantic, we  found  seething  with  a  sort  of  stunned  and 
speechless  excitement.  Several  hundred  men  were 
congregated  upon  the  street  in  front  of  the  rent-office 
conversing  low  with  downcast  heads,  as  if  each  of 
them  had  a  near  friend  dead.     These  were  the  mar- 


284         THE  SEED   OF  THE  LAND  LEAGUE. 

quis  of  Sligo's  tenantry,  of  the  parish  of  Kilgeever. 
They  had  been  convoked  by  summons  from  the 
baihff  to  pay  the  May  gale  and  the  arrears  into  the 
hands  of  the  agent,  Mr.  Sydney  Smith,  who,  they 
say,  is  a  near  relative  of  Mr.  Patten  Smith  Bridge, 
sometime  of  the  Galtees  (though,  of  course,  that 
could  not  be  fairly  called  his  fault  even  if  it  were 
true). 

"  Mr,  Smith  attended,  so  did  the  tenants,  headed 
by  their  faithful  priests,  the  Rev.  William  Joyce,  P.  P., 
and  the  Rev.  Father  Lavelle,  C.  C. ;  but  instead  of 
rent  they  presented  him  with  a  respectful  memorial, 
which  they  asked  him  to  forward  to  the  marquis  of 
Sligo  as  their  apology.  In  this  document,  which 
was  worded  with  studied  moderation,  they  expressed 
their  willingness,  but  their  utter  inability,  to  pay 
even  the  rents  that  their  holdings  bore  in  former 
years.  *  As  to  the  increased  rent,  it  is  altogether  an 
impossibility.  We  have  worked  and  toiled,'  they 
declared  with  touching  eloquence,  *  to  the  utmost  of 
our  strength  in  order  to  make  a  soil  by  its  nature 
cold,  barren  and  swampy  fertile  and  productive,  and 
yet,  with  all  our  efforts,  we  cannot  procure  from  the 
land  the  bare  necessaries  of  life.'  Then,  after  stating 
in  plain  terms  that  for  years  it  has  been  only  the 
consideration  of  the  shopkeepers  that  has  kept  many 
of  them  from  '  starvation  '  or  from  *  the  workhouse,' 
there  came  this  fearful  fact :  *  You  will  doubtless  feel 
surprised  to  hear  that  so  great  is  our  indebtedness 
that  the  property  of  the  greater  part  of  the  tenants 


THE   SEED   OF   THE  LAND   LEAGUE.         285 

on  His  Lordship's  estate  in  this  parish,  if  sold  out, 
would  scarcely  pay  the  creditors.'  And  the  poor 
people  wound  up  their  appeal  with  a  very  hand- 
some compliment  to  'the  noble  house  of  Westport ' 
and  its  motto,  which,  it  appears,  is  *  Live  and  let 
live.' 

"  Mr.  Sydney  Smith  listened  with  a  grave  face,  in- 
timated that  there  were  some  unpleasant  phrases  in 
the  memorial  which  must  be  expunged  before  he 
could  place  it  under  the  eyes  of  His  Lordship,  but 
finally  blurted  out  roundly  (as  I  am  given  to  under- 
stand) that,  from  a  communication  of  His  Lordship's 
views  which  he  had  received  lately,  he  was  afraid 
that  the  memorial  might  just  as  well  remain  un- 
amended and  unpresented.  The  rentless  tenantry, 
having  nothing  to  pay  and  nothing  more  to  urge, 
were  bowed  airily  into  the  street,  where  they  were 
crouching  helplessly  at  the  time  of  our  arrival." 
The  following  is  from  the  Connaught  Telegraph : 
"  A  letter  appeared  recently  in  the  London  Times 
and  the  Dublin  Freeman  s  yournal,  signed  by  Charles 
Ormsby  Blake  of  County  Mayo,  asserting  that  num- 
bers of  his  tenantry  had  been  taken  from  their  beds 
in  the  night  and  been  compelled  to  swear  not  to  pay 
their  rents  to  Mr.  Blake.  To  this  charge  the  tenant- 
ry make  reply  in  the  following  terms : 

"  *  Claremorris,  June  23,  1879. 
"'We   the   undersigned,  tenant-farmers,  residents 

of  Coolcon  and   Ballyglass,   County  of  Mayo,  and 

\i 


2S6         THE   SEED   OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE. 

tenants  to  Charles  Ormsby,  Esq.,  do  impeach  the 
veracity  of  the  letter  which  appeared  over  Mr. 
Blake's  name  in  the  London  Times,  Freemait's  yonr- 
nal  and  the  provincial  papers,  etc. 

"  *  We  emphatically  deny  that  we  were,  "  on  the 
night  of  May  ii,  1879,"  taken  off  our  beds  and 
sworn  by  strange  men  not  to  pay  our  rents  to 
Mr.  Blake,  as  stated  by  him  in  his  memorial  to 
His  Grace  the  duke  of  Marlborough,  lord-lieu- 
tenant of  Ireland. 

"  *  Neither  did  we  threaten  a  process-officer  or 
ejectment-server,  as  stated  by  Mr.  Blake,  as  such  an 
individual,  to  our  knowledge,  did  not  put  in  an  ap- 
pearance in  our  townlands. 

"  *  We  deny  owing  three  half-years'  rent,  as  stated 
by  Mr.  Blake.  The  majority  of  his  tenantry  have 
paid  Mr.  Blake  a  year's  rent  over  their  agreement, 
on  his  promise  of  giving  leases — a  promise  he  has 
failed  to  keep. 

"  *  It  is  true  we  in  a  body  refused  to  pay  Mr. 
Ormsby  Blake's  agents,  Messrs.  Stewart  &  Kincaid, 
a  rack-rent;  but  we  offered  those  gentlemen  a  full 
and  fair  rent,  which  we  are  at  any  moment  ready  to 
hand  them  over. 

" '  Owing  to  the  great  depression  in  trade  and  re- 
duction in  the  value  of  agricultural  produce,  we  are 
not  able  to  pay  the  exorbitant  rent  imposed  on  us, 
as  the  following  tabular  statement  will  show  to  the 
world : 


N-. 


\ 


nc     ^     \ 


//       ^     ">* 


V^*K      * 


i.eyrTrpenf.  f/iua. 


<-v\    ^ 


Sexton. 
Biggar 


Healy. 
Brennan. 


AGITATORS    OF   THE   PRESENT. 


THE   SEED   OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE. 


289 


Tenants'  names.                         Gov't  valuation. 

Rack 

-rent. 

John  Joyce,  Ballyglass    .    .    . 

/8 

0 

0 

/I  I 

2    6 

Wm.  Joyce,  Ballyglass    .    .    . 

8 

10 

0 

12 

0  0 

L.  Joyce,  Ballyglass    .... 

8 

5 

0 

14 

0   0 

D.  Slattery,  Ballyglass    .    .    . 

17 

0 

0 

32 

10   0 

M.  Hannon,  Ballyglass  .    .    . 

15 

0 

0 

22 

0   0 

Widow  Coyne,  Ballyglass  .    . 

61 

0 

0 

90 

0  0 

Widow  Hahigan,  Ballyglass  . 

6 

0 

0 

8 

0   0 

M.  Hannon,  Ballyglass  .    .    . 

15 

15 

0 

22 

5  0 

P.  Mangan,  Ballyglass    .    .    . 

7 

10 

0 

10 

12  6 

Widow  McDonagh,  Ballyglass 

9 

12 

0 

12 

12  0 

M.  Green,  Ballyglass  .... 

9 

4 

0 

12 

10  0 

Widow  McHugh,  Ballyglass  . 

12 

0 

0 

18 

0  0 

J.  Donohue,  Ballyglass   .    .    . 

10 

0 

0 

17 

15  0 

P.  Corcoran,  Coolcon  .... 

8 

10 

0 

12 

II  0 

Thomas  Hessian,  Coolcon  .    . 

9 

5 

0 

17 

0  0 

J.  Mullan,  Coolcon 

8 

5 

0 

15 

9  0 

D.  Walters,  Coolcon 

15 

5 

0 

22 

10  0 

Pat  Flanigan,  Coolcon    .    .    . 

10 

0 

0 

13 

4  0 

J,  Walters,  Coolcon     .... 

15 

13 

0 

24 

0  0 

M.  Heanue,  Coolcon  .... 

12 

10 

0 

23 

0  0 

P.  Prendergast,  Coolcon     ,    .    . 

22 

10 

0 

45 

10  0 

"  *  Before  the  stripping  of  the  land,  some  eight 
years  ago,  when  the  excessive  rent  was  imposed 
upon  us,  we  will  give  an  instance  of  what  the  old 
rent  was  and  the  present  rent  extorted  out  of  us : 
James  Hessian,  government  valuation,  £\2  ;  old  rent, 
£\^\  present  rent,  £26  13s.  6d. ;  and  the  majority- 
are  in  like  proportion. 

"  *  We,  the  above-named  tenantry,  empower  and 
authorize  Mr.  James  Daly,  proprietor  of  the  Con- 
naught  Telegraph,  to  publish  this  letter  in  vindica- 
tion of  our  characters. 


290         THE   SEED    OF   THE   LAND   LEAGUE. 

"  *  Signed  in  presence  of  P.  J.  Gordon,  J.  W.  Nally 
and  others,  etc' " 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  such  testimony  ;  dur- 
ing the  years  mentioned  the  newspapers  were  full  of 
similar  narratives.  One  more  will  suffice.  On  No- 
vember 19,  1879,  ^^^  editor  of  the  Connaught  Tel- 
egrapJi^  James  Daly,  Michael  Davitt  and  John  Bryce 
Killen  were  arrested  in  Dublin  for  speeches  alleged 
to  have  incited  a  breach  of  the  peace.  The  next 
day  the  following  placard  was  posted  throughout 
Mayo  : 

"  To  THE  People  of  Mayo — 

"  Fellow-Countrymen  :  The  hour  of  trial  has 
come.  Your  leaders  are  arrested.  Davitt  and  Daly 
are  in  prison.  You  know  your  duty.  Will  you  do 
it?  Yes,  you  will.  Balla  is  the  place  of  meeting, 
and  Saturday  is  the  day.  Come  in  your  thousands, 
and  show  the  government  and  the  world  that  your 
rights  you  will  maintain.  To  the  rescue,  in  the 
mightiness  of  your  numbers,  of  the  land  and  lib- 
erty. God  save  the  people !  Balla,  Balla,  Saturday 
next." 

The  day  of  the  meeting  this  placard  appeared  : 
"  Parnell  and  Davitt  to  the  People  of  Mayo  : 
Men  of  Mayo,  we  earnestly  counsel  such  of  you  as 
intend  to  be  witnesses  of  the  eviction  scene  to  be 
dignified,  orderly  and  peaceful  in  your  conduct.  The 
future  of  our  movement  depends  upon  your  attitude 


THE   SEED   OF   THE   LAND   LEAGUE.         29 1 

this  day.  Give  no  excuse  for  violence  on  the  part  of 
the  government,  and  our  great  cause  is  won." 

Mr.  Parnell,  Mr.  Dillon  and  Mr.  Sexton  were 
present  at  the  meeting.  The  proceedings  were 
thus  reported  : 

"  One  vast  procession  was  formed  in  Balla  for  the 
march  to  Dempsey's  farm  at  Loonamore.  That  pro- 
cession was  one  of  the  most  remarkable  ever  seen. 
The  men  were  compacted  four  deep  in  a  dense  col- 
umn spread  over  a  mile  and  a  half  of  road,  a  couple 
of  hundred  mounted  men  bringing  up  the  rear.  Pass- 
ing the  house  of  Sir  Robert  Blosse's  agent,  the  cry 
of '  Three  groans  for  tyrants  !'  was  taken  up  all  along 
the  ranks.  During  the  march  home  the  band  played 
the  *  Dead  March  '  in  this  neighborhood. 

"  Dempsey's  farm  is  situated  on  the  crest  of  a  steep 
hill  overlooking  for  more  than  a  mile  the  Balla  road. 
When  the  head  of  the  procession  reached  the  foot  of 
the  hill,  the  fields  overhead  were  seen  to  be  full  of 
armed  policemen,  who  fell  into  rank  at  the  approach 
of  the  procession.  The  intentions  of  the  police  were 
even  then  in  considerable  doubt. 

**  Mr.  Parnell  and  the  leaders  were  the  first  to  scale 
the  hill.  They  were  informed  by  Dempsey  that  the 
sheriff  had  promised  to  give  him  more  time.  The 
police  had  been  by  this  time  drawn  up  in  a  body 
at  the  rear  of  the  house,  under  command  of  Major 
Wyse,  R.  M.,  Castlebar. 

"  A  rath  within  fifty  yards  of  Dempsey's  house  on 
the  brow  of  the  hill  was  immediately  fixed  as  the 


292         THE  SEED    OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE. 

place  of  meeting.  Now  another  very  singular  scene 
took  place.  The  whole  road  below  for  more  than  a 
mile  was  covered  by  this  huge  peasant-procession. 
As  the  head  of  the  column  reached  the  foot  of  the 
hill  it  parted,  two  to  either  side,  and  climbed  the  hill 
in  an  immense  semicircle  extending  over  the  whole 
face  of  the  hill.  The  two  horns  of  this  vast  crescent 
advanced  quickly  and  simultaneously,  as  if  with  the 
intention  of  surrounding  the  house  and  with  it  a 
large  body  of  the  police.  The  police  immediately 
prepared  to  retire,  but  Mr.  Parnell  exerted  himself 
to  stop  the  movement,  and  both  sides  of  the  advan- 
cing procession,  having  halted,  came  quietly  together 
around  the  speakers.  There  must  have  been  quite 
eight  thousand  men  in  that  extraordinary  array,  and 
their  self-possession,  orderliness  and  enthusiasm 
were  even  more  remarkable  than  their  numbers. 
The  Ballinrobe  brass  band  arrived  during  the 
meeting. 

"  Mr.  Thomas  Brennan  (afterward  arrested)  said : 
**  We  are  here  to-day  for  a  threefold  purpose.  We 
are  here,  in  the  first  place,  to  protest  against  the  evic- 
tion and  possible  death  of  nine  of  God's  creatures. 
We  are  here  to  protest  in  the  name  of  our  country 
and  of  justice  against  the  unconstitutional  arrest  of 
our  leaders,  who  are  now  paying  the  penalty  of  their 
devotion  to  the  people's  cause  (cheers  for  them),  and 
we  are  here  also  to  declare  our  determination  to 
go  on  with  this  movement  until  victory  is  secured 
(cheers). 


THE  SEED  OF  THE  LAND   LEAGUE.        293 

"  A  Voice. — Victory  or  death  ! 

"  Mr.  Brennan. — And  until  the  last  trace  of  feudal 
landlordism  is  swept  from  the  country.  The  English 
government  has  come  to  the  rescue  of  that  accursed 
institution  (groans),  but  it  cannot  save  it.  The  old 
crumbling  edifice  is  going,  and  it  must  fall  (cheers). 
Prison-bars  cannot  hide  the  light  of  God's  truth,  and, 
though  you  or  I  may  have  to  follow  Mr.  Davitt  or 
Mr.  Daly,  our  cause  cannot  be  imprisoned  (cheers). 
That  cause  is  just,  and  it  must  triumph  (cheers). 

"  A  Voice. — We  won't  fail  you,  any  way. 

"  Mr.  Brennan. — My  friends,  our  lives  are  no 
longer  our  own.  They  now  belong  to  our  country 
and  to  justice  (cheers).  We  must  consecrate  them 
to-day  (cries  of  '  So  we  will !')  to  the  advancement 
of  that  cause  for  which  our  friends  are  suffering.  I, 
for  one,  am  not  here  to-day  to  withdraw  anything  I 
have  ever  said  in  this  movement  since  I  first  stood 
upon  that  platform  in  Irishtown  (cries  of  *  Never!' 
and  cheers).  And  whatever  may  be  the  words  which 
Mr.  Davitt  used  at  the  Gurteen  meeting,  I  here  adopt 
them  to-day  (cheers) ;  and  if  I  knew  them,  I  would 
repeat  them  for  you,  believing  in  my  soul  that 
they  are  the  words  of  justice  and  truth  (loud  cheer- 
ing). 

"  A  Voice. — My  life  on  you  ! 

"  Mr.  Brennan. — It  will  become  us  here  not  to 
make  long-winded  orations  to-day.  The  time  for 
mere  speech-making  is  gone  by.  The  hour  of  re- 
solve and  act  has  arrived  (cheers). 


294         THE   SEED    OF  THE   LAND   LEAGUE. 

"  A  Voice. — Stand  together ! 

"  Mr.  Brennan. — The  speech  to-day  is  the  indig- 
nation which  I  see  flashing  from  your  eyes  and  the 
determination  which  rests  upon  your  brows  (cheers). 
Think  of  the  possible  scene  which  we  might  be  called 
upon  here  to-day  to  witness.  Think  of  the  poor  man 
who  lies  in  yonder  cabin,  the  hot  fever  darting  wildly 
through  his  brain ;  think  of  the  poor  child  who  every 
time  he  asks  for  a  morsel  of  bread  sends  a  pang  worse 
than  a  bayonet-thrust  through  its  mother's  heart  (cries 
of  *  True !').  Think  of  this,  and  then  think  of  the 
evictor  (groans,  and  cries  of  *  Down  with  him !')  who 
has  fled  the  country  that  his  ears  may  not  catch  the 
execrations  of  the  people. 

"  A  Voice. — That  his  eyes  may  never  see,  either 
(laughter). 

*•  Mr.  Brennan. — Think  of  him  as  he  enjoys  all 
the  luxuries  of  life  and  pockets  the  money  which  the 
sweat  of  the  poor  man  has  wrought  from  the  land 
(groans),  for  in  this  enlightened  nineteenth  century 
God's  first  decree  to  fallen  man  is  contravened  by 
human  law,  and  the  majority  of  mankind  must  work 
and  toil  to  support  the  few  in  idleness  (groans). 

"  A  VoiCE.^ — It  won't  be  so  any  longer. 

"Another. — Groan  every  tyrant  (groans). 
'  "  Mr.  Brennan. — Think  of  the  scene  of  '47  ;  think 
of  the  blazing  roof-tree  ;  think,  oh  think  !  of  the  work- 
house and  the  emigrant  ship  ;  think  of  the  starvation 
and  the  death  and  the  cofifinless  graves  ;  and  then 
tell  me  to-day,  will  you  be  true  to  the  preaching  of 


THE   SEED   OF  THE  LAND   LEAGUE.         295 

our  friends  in  prison  ?  (Loud  cheering,  and  cries  of 
'  We  will !') 

"  A  Voice. — Our  blood  is  up. 

"  Mr.  Brennan. — Shall  one  generation  witness  two 
such  scenes  as  '47  ?  (Cries  of  *  Never  !')  Forbid  it. 
Heaven !  I  call  upon  every  one  of  you  who  can  to- 
day to  do  everything  in  your  power  to  avoid  it.  Or- 
ganize for  the  protection  of  your  own  rights ;  combine 
that  you  may  offer  an  unbroken  front  to  the  common 
enemy  (cheers).  Surely,  if  ever  you  are  to  be  earn- 
est, it  is  now,  when  your  best  and  bravest  are  in 
prison ;  now,  when  liberty  of  speech  is  proscribed  in 
the  land ;  now,  when  the  gaunt  spectres  of  famine 
and  death  are  standing  by  your  thresholds  (cheers). 
I  appeal  to  one  class  in  the  community  especially. 
I  appeal  to  the  men  of  the  royal  Irish  constabulary, 
and  I  ask  them.  Are  they  content  to  remain  or  to  be- 
come the  destroyers  of  their  people,  of  their  own  kith 
and  kin  ?  (cheers).  Turning  toward  the  police,  the 
speaker  continued :  Look  at  a  possible  future ;  look 
at  your  own  brother  lying  in  yonder  ditch  dead  and 
naked :  the  last  garment  was  sold  to  buy  a  measure 
of  milk  for  the  poor  child  in  whose  body  the  teeth 
of  the  lean  dog  is  now  fastened  (groans).  Are  you 
human  nature?  Can  you  look  upon  such  scenes, 
strong  men  as  you  are,  without  feeling  your  knees 
tremble  and  a  curse  gurgling  in  your  throats?  Need 
I  remind  you  that  in  '47,  when  you  were  called  on  to 
do  work  similar  to  that  with  which  you  are  now  threat- 
ened, when  one  of  your  force  fired  upon  an  unhappy 


296         THE   SEED   OF   THE   LAND   LEAGUE. 

crowd,  to  find  five  minutes  later  that  his  bullet  had 
lodged  in  the  breast  of  the  mother  that  bore  him  ? 
You  are  Irishmen,  and  I  doubt  not  that  beneath 
many  a  policeman's  jacket  a  warm  Irish  heart  beats 
(cheers).  Are  you  content,  then,  to  be  the  destroyers 
of  your  own  people,  or  will  you  rather  twine  hands 
with  them  and  snatch  victory  from  death,  and  save 
the  lives  of  the  people  ?  (cheers). — As  for  you,  my 
friends,  your  course  is  clear.  Keep  before  your  minds 
the  great  fact  that  the  land  of  Ireland  belongs  to  the 
people  of  Ireland  (cheers).  Follow  the  teaching  of 
the  apostles  of  our  creed,  who  are  now  its  martyrs 
and  its  confessors.  We  tell  you  here  to-day  what 
has  been  told  you  from  every  platform  in  your  coun- 
try. We  tell  you  to  pay  no  rent  until  you  get  a  rea- 
sonable reduction.  We  tell  you  to  take  no  land  from 
which  another  man  has  been  evicted  (cheers). 

"A  Voice. — Down  with  those  that  do ! 

"  Mr.  Brennan. — Should  such  a  mean  wretch  be 
found  in  Mayo  to  snatch  such  a  farm,  then,  I  say,  go 
mark  him  well,  cast  him  out  of  the  society  of  men  as 
an  unclean  thing. 

**A  Voice. — Yes,  as  a  mad  dog. 

"  Mr.  Brennan. — Let  none  of  you  be  found  to  buy 
with  him  or  sell  with  him,  and  watch  how  the  mod- 
ern Iscariot  will  prosper  (cheers).  The  loss  of  each 
comrade  but  throws  new  duties  on  us  who  are  left 
behind.  Therefore  we  must  all  take  off  our  coats 
and  go  to  work  earnestly  in  this  movement.  John 
Mitchel  said   from  the  dock   in    Green  Street  that 


-^-Jh#?%;' 


O'Connor. 
Redpath. 


AGITATORS    OF   THE   PRESENT, 


THE   SEED   OF   THE   LAND   LEAGUE.         299 

there  were  one,  two,  three — ay,  a  hundred — prepared 
to  follow  him.  Ay,  and  Mr.  Davitt  must  know  in 
his  prison-cell  to-day  that  there  are  not  hundreds, 
but  hundreds  of  thousands,  prepared  to  take  up  and 
carry  out  the  work  which  he  began  (great  cheering). 

**  The  resolution  was  carried  with  acclamation. 

"  Mr.  Parnell,  M.  P.,  on  coming  forward  to  propose 
the  second  resolution,  was  tremendously  cheered. 
He  said : 

"  Mr.  Chairman  and  men  of  Mayo,  after  the  mag- 
nificent speech  of  Mr.  Brennan  it  would  ill  become 
me  to  occupy  your  time  with  many  words  of  mine. 
As  he  has  told  you,  these  are  days  not  for  words  but 
for  action  (cheers) ;  and  upon  your  action  to-day  in 
coming  here  in  the  face  of  every  intimidation,  calm 
and  determined  to  do  your  duty  by  your  suffering 
fellow-creatures  in  yonder  cabin,  you  have  shown 
that  you  know  how  to  distinguish  what  your  duty 
is  to  your  country  to-day  (cheers).  I  alluded  just 
now  to  Mr.  Brennan's  magnificent  talent,  but  it  is 
too  true  that  in  these  days  Ireland's  most  devoted 
and  talented  sons  are  marked  out  for  imprisonment, 
and  I  very  much  fear  that  the  result  of  the  lead  that 
he  has  taken  in  this  movement  will  be  that  he  may 
be  also  sent  to  share  the  fate  of  Messrs.  Davitt,  Daly 
and  Killen  (*  No,  no !').  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  shown 
that  he  knows  how  to  appreciate  the  strength  of  this 
movement  (groans  for  him).  The  whole  landed  aris- 
tocracy of  England,  and  of  Ireland  also,  recognize  that 
the  movement  that  was  begun  last  "February  on  the 


300         THE   SEED   OF  THE   LAND  LEAGUE. 

plains  of  Mayo,  at  Irishtown,  has  set  the  handwrit 
ing  on  the  wall  for  the  downfall  of  the  most  infamous 
system  of  land  tenure  that  the  world  has  ever  seen 
(cheers).  I  congratulate  you  upon  your  attitude 
to-day — calm,  determined,  self-reliant  and  within  the 
law  (cheers).  In  this  way  we  shall  teach  our  rulers 
that  although  they  may  violate  the  constitution,  al- 
though they  may  rush  into  illegal  acts,  we  are  not 
going  to  be  induced  to  follow  them  ('  No,  no !'  and 
loud  cheering).  It  is  no  use  for  me  to  repeat  the 
advice  that  I  gave  the  people  of  Mayo  in  February 
last.  You  have  shown  that  in  keeping  a  firm  grip 
of  your  homesteads  (cheers,  and  cries  of  *  So  we  will !'), 
and  in  refusing  to  pay  an  unjust  rent,  you  have  shown 
that  you  know  well  that  in  that  advice  is  your  only 
safety  (cheers). 

"  But  I  would  exhort  you  with  all  the  little  power 
or  force  that  I  may  possess  to  maintain  the  attitude 
that  you  have  maintained  up  to  the  present  (cheers, 
and  cries  of  *  Never  fear  us  !'),  and  not  to  allow  any 
provocation  to  draw  you  away  from  your  duty  (cries 
of '  Never !').  Even  if  your  leaders  are  torn  from  your 
midst,  let  them  go :  others  will  take  their  places  (en- 
thusiastic cheering) ;  and  by  showing  that  you  under- 
stand your  rights  and  the  way  in  which  you  can  win 
them,  you  will  reduce  the  pride  of  this  haughty  gov- 
ernment, which,  after  having  beaten  the  disunited 
Afghans,  after  having  conquered  the  naked  Zulus, 
has  the  temerity  to  come  to  Ireland  and  to  place  us 
on  a  level  with  these  savages  (groans). 


THE  SEED   OF   THE  LAND   LEAGUE.         3OI 

"A  Voice. — They  will  find  us  more  formidable 
enemies. 

"  Mr.  Parnell. — I  am  not  going  to  detain  you.  I 
merely  wished  to  come  into  your  midst  to-day,  for  I 
feared  that  a  terrible  event  was  going  to  happen  be- 
fore our  eyes.  I  could  not  feel  that  I  would  have 
done  my  duty  if  I  had  allowed  the  people  to  come 
into  danger  and  had  remained  away  myself  (loud 
cheering).  It  is  the  part  of  a  coward  to  encourage 
others  to  take  a  position  that  he  is  not  prepared  to 
maintain  himself,  and  I  wished  to  come  here  to-day 
to  join  you  in  whatever  fortune  might  befall  you 
(prolonged  cheers).  Thank  God  that  the  eyes  of 
the  cruel  landlord  who  was  threatening  a  black — a 
terribly  black — deed  upon  this  day  have  been  opened 
to  the  reality  of  the  position !  Thank  God  that  we, 
on  the  eve  almost  of  what  appeared  to  be  the  first 
eviction  in  this  land  agitation,  have  been  spared  that 
terrible  infliction !  (cheers).  I  look  upon  this  meeting, 
and  the  result  of  this  meeting — I  look  upon  the  fact 
that  the  owners  of  that  house  are  in  possession  of  it — 
as  the  harbinger  of  the  speedy  and  triumphant  success 
of  our  movement  (cheers).  Had  it  been  otherwise, 
had  you  been  placed  in  that  position  when  it  would 
have  Leen  almost  impossible  for  human  hearts  and 
hands  to  forbear,  I  tremble  to  think  what  might  have 
been  the  result;  but,  thank  God!  we  have  been  spared 
this,  and  that  we  have  as  the  reward  of  the  calm  de- 
termination of  the  pecple  of  Mayo  the  magnificent 

triumph    of    this    evening    (loud    cheering).       Bring 
19 


302         THE  SEED    Of  THE   LAND  LEAGUE. 

home,  then,  with  you  this  lesson — that  a  man,  how- 
ever powerful  he  may  be,  respects  his  fellow-men 
when  they  respect  themselves  (cheers),  and  that  as 
you  have. shown  that  you  know  how  to  respect  your- 
selves, so  you  may  expect  in  the  future  that  your 
right  to  the  soil  of  Ireland  will  be  respected  by  those 
who  attempt  to  deprive  you  of  it  (cheers).  Let  us, 
then,  not  hesitate  in  our  great  work.  Let  us  press 
forward  (cheers).  Let  us  recollect  that  we  are  the 
inheritors  of  a  great  past,  that  our  country  is  a  great 
country  and  worth  fighting  for,  that  we  in  these  days 
have  opportunities  which  were  denied  to  your  fathers 
when  they  struggled  against  tithes,  and  that  the  power 
of  no  man  can  prevail  against  a  self-respecting  and 
self-relying  people  (cheers).  Let  us,  then,  maintain 
our  dignified  attitude.  Let  us  remain  within  the  law 
and  within  the  constitution,  and  let  us  stand,  even 
though  we  have  to  stand  on  the  last  plank  of  the 
constitution ;  let  us  stand  until  that  plank  is  torn  from 
under  our  feet  (loud  cheering).  I  have  to  propose  for 
your  adoption  this  resolution  : 

"  *  That  we,  the  people  of  Mayo,  protest  against  the 
recent  arrests  as  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  gov- 
ernment to  stifle  the  voice  of  constitutional  agitation 
and  drive  the  people  into  acts  of  violence*  (cheers). 

"  Mr.  John  Dillon  seconded  the  resolution. 

**  Mr.  T.  Sexton  proposed  the  third  resolution : 

'*  *  That  we  earnestly  call  upon  the  people  of  Ire- 
land to  continue  to  maintain  their  attitude  of  dignified 
self-restraint,  and  to  carefully  abstain  from  giving  the 


THE   SEED    OF   THE  LAND   LEAGUE.         303 

government  any  excuse  for  inaugurating  the  policy 
of  coercion  which  we  believe  they  have  in  contem- 
plation.' 

"  Mr.  John  Walsh,  Balla,  seconded  the  resolution. 

**  Mr.  Costelloe,  Kiltimagh,  proposed  the  fourth  res- 
olution : 

** '  That  we  hereby  pledge  ourselves  to  persevere  in 
this  movement  until  we  have  succeeded  in  securing 
for  the  Irish  farmer  free  land.' 

"  Mr.  James  O'Connor,  Dublin,  seconded  the  resolu- 
tion, which  was  adopted  with  acclamation." 

The  Irish  National  Land  League  was  now  in  full 
operation.  Its  aim  and  its  policy  were  fully  indicated 
at  Balla.  It  proposed  a  peaceful,  constitutional  agita- 
tion to  recover  the  lands  of  Ireland  for  the  people  to 
whom  they  naturally  belong. 


CHAPTER   X. 
THE 'MEN   WHO   GATHERED    THE   CROP. 

THERE  is  an  impression  in  the  minds  of  many 
Americans  who  read  only  British  literature 
filtered  through  a  small  class  of  American  news- 
papers that  the  Irish  agitator  is  an  ignorant  ruffian. 
It  is  a  singular  fact  that  every  man  who  has  risen 
to  sufficient  distinction  to  be  abused,  imprisoned  or 
slain  for  Ireland  by  the  English  government  has 
been  a  man  of  high  personal  character,  and  that 
the  leaders  of  Irish  agitation  have  been  almost  in- 
variably men  of  exceptional  intellectual  gifts  and 
educational  training.  The  character  and  culture  of 
Wolfe  Tone  may  be  judged  by  his  autobiography. 
The  agitators  of  a  hundred  years  ago — the  men  who 
compelled  England  to  concede  the  independence  of 
the  Irish  Parliament — were  the  first  thinkers  in  the 
country  and  had  no  superiors  in  the  British  empire. 
Many  of  them  became  distinguished  members  of  the 
British  Parliament  after  the  passage  of  the  act  of 
legislative  union.  Robert  Emmet,  gentle  and  ac- 
complished, would  have  graced  the  most  polished 
society  of  any  country.     His  brother,  Thomas  Ad- 

204 


THE    GATHERERS    OF   THE    CROP.  305 

dis  Emmet,  and  his  companion  in  exile,  Dr.  Mac- 
neven,  became  equally  distinguished  in  their  respect- 
ive professions  of  law  and  medicine  in  New  York ; 
and  their  monuments  on  Broadway  proclaim  for  all 
time  their  services  to  the  country  which  gave  them 
home  and  opportunity. 

Those  who  led  the  agitation  for  Catholic  emanci- 
pation were  scholars  and  literary  men.  Sheil  wrote 
Evadne,  which  still  keeps  the  stage ;  his  speeches 
are  studied  by  all  who  wish  to  become  adepts  in 
elaborate  forensic  art.  The  magnificent  oratory  of 
O'Connell  richly  displays  his  classical  studies  in 
France ;  for,  being  a  Catholic,  he  could  get  no  ed- 
ucation in  Ireland.  The  letters  of  Bishop  Doyle,  his 
coadjutor  in  agitating  for  emancipation,  are  of  sin- 
gular literary  beauty  and  remarkable  argumentative 
power ;  and  the  late  Archbishop  MacHale  of  Tuam, 
who  was  a  young  priest  when  O'Connell  was  leading 
his  people  out  of  bondage,  and  who  enthusiastically 
supported  him,  was  possessed  of  attainments  in  the 
languages  and  the  arts  which  even  the  universities 
of  England  rarely  confer  on  the  sons  of  hereditary 
wealth. 

The  agitators  of  1848  are  so  fully  described  in  Sir 
Charles  Gavan  Duffy's  Young  Ireland  that  they  need 
not  be  more  than  mentioned  here;  they  constituted 
a  brilliant  group  whose  genius  is  indelibly  stamped 
on  the  thought  and  will  for  ever  adorn  the  literature 
of  their  country.  The  Fenian  movement  of  1866 — 
so  frequently  sneered  at,  and  yet  so  effectual  for  the 


306  THE    GATHERERS   OF   THE    CROP. 

good  of  Ireland  that  it  wrung  from  the  first  minister 
of  Great  Britain  not  only  the  bill  abolishing  the 
State-Church  in  Ireland,  but  the  public  confession 
of  that  momentous  fact — contained  men  of  culture 
whose  motives  were  as  high  as  their  judgment  was 
faulty,  and  the  speeches  delivered  by  some  of  them 
on  their  trial  for  treason  betray  not  only  sublime 
courage  and  the  purest  patriotism,  but  evidences  of 
culture  which  would  have  been  eminently  useful  in 
private  pursuits. 

The  leaders  of  the  present  agitation  are  also  men 
of  education.  They  are  not  brilliant  men,  as  were 
the  group  of  '48 ;  they  do  not  include  great  orators 
like  Grattan,  Shell  or  O'Connell ;  but  they  are  men 
of  clear  conception  of  economic  principles,  able  to 
discuss  the  questions  of  land  tenure  and  peasant 
proprietary,  of  home  rule  and  the  development  of 
the  natural  resources  of  their  country,  with  a  co- 
gency which  their  opponents  have  been  wholly  un- 
able to  match.  They  are  engaged  in  serious  bus- 
iness— the  accomplishment  of  a  vast  economic  and 
social  reform  by  strictly  peaceful  and  constitutional 
means.  They  ask  no  soldiers  from  France,  as  Wolfe 
Tone  did ;  they  organize  no  conspiracies  of  reckless 
youth  and  undrilled  yeomen,  as  poor  Emmet  did ; 
they  have  no  thousands  of  armed  and  eager  volun- 
teers at  their  backs,  as  Grattan  had ;  and  as  con- 
trasted even  with  O'Connell,  who  relied  on  the  same 
methods,  they  have  not  the  advantage  he  had  in 
touching  the  sympathy  of  mankind  in  behalf  of  re- 


Emmet. 

Wolfe  Tone. 

Fitzgerald. 

Currac 

Grattan. 
O'CoKnell. 

Davis. 

AGITATORS   OF  THE  PAST. 


THE    GATHERERS   OF  THE    CROP.  309 

Uglous  equality.  Their  task  is  more  difficult :  they 
address  themselves  to  the  intellect  of  a  hostile  power 
on  an  economic  and  social  problem  perplexing  to  all, 
unintelligible  to  many,  and  they  must  overcome  with- 
out a-battalion  the  army  and  navy  of  that  vast  empire 
whose  "  drum-beat  is  heard  around  the  world,"  and 
whose  colonial  dependencies,  excluding  Ireland,  cover 
a  third  of  the  surface  of  the  globe  and  comprise  a 
fourth  of  its  inhabitants.  The  men  who  undertake  a 
moral  and  political  enterprise  of  such  magnitude  can- 
not be  ignorant  ruffians;  they  must  be  more  than 
average  men,  well  informed,  sagacious,  self-control- 
ling, patient,  resolute,  enlightened,  self-sacrificing 
and  prepared  for  incessant  calumny. 

The  founder  and  organizer  of  the  Land  League, 
Michael  Davitt,  is  of  peasant  birth  and  self-educated. 
Indeed,  it  is  probable,  had  not  his  family  been  evicted 
while  he  was  a  lad  and  compelled  to  seek  in  an  Eng- 
lish manufactory  the  bread  denied  them  in  their  na- 
tive land,  that  he  would  have  been  deprived  of  the 
chance  of  education  which  still  another  misfortune 
increased.  He  was  born  in  Straide,  County  Mayo, 
in  1845  :  those  who  saw  him  in  this  country  would 
suppose  him  a  much  older  man.  He  has  been  aged, 
not  by  time,  but  by  the  walls  and  cruelties  of  British 
prisons.  A  year  or  more  after  the  eviction  of  his 
family  from  the  farm  which  his  father  tilled  he  went 
with  his  parents  to  Haslingden,  near  Manchester,  in 
Lancashire,  and  the  extreme  poverty  to  which  they 
had  been  reduced  made  it  necessary  that  he  should 


3IO  THE    GATHERERS  OF   THE    CROP. 

go  to  work  in  the  nearest  cotton-factory.  A  whir- 
ring wheel  caught  the  sleeve  of  his  right  arm  ;  in  a 
moment  the  arm  itself  was  so  severely  injured  that 
amputation  became  necessary.  No  longer  able  to 
work  at  manual  labor,  in  five  years  at  a  Wesleyan 
school,  and  still  later  at  an  institute,  he  laid  the 
foundation  of  an  education  to  which  each  succeed- 
ing year  has  contributed,  even  while  in  prison.  At 
fifteen  he  was  employed  as  bookkeeper  and  letter- 
carrier.  A  few  years  afterward  he  engaged  in  mer- 
cantile occupations  and  became  a  travelling  agent  for 
a  house  which  sold  arms. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  fanaticism  threatened 
to  burn  the  Catholic  churches  of  Lancashire;  and 
Mr.  Davitt,  who  was  devoutly  attached  to  his  faith, 
led  a  defence-party  which  dispersed  a  mob  in  Has- 
lingden  by  firing  over  their  heads,  thus  saving  the 
church  and  doubtless  many  lives.  Nearly  ten  years 
later,  when  he  returned  to  Haslingden  after  his  release 
from  imprisonment,  the  people  of  the  town  went  out 
en  masse  to  welcome  the  "  ticket-of-leave,"  and  among 
those  who  greeted  him  most  warmly  were  some  of 
the  men  whom  his  intrepidity  and  coolness  had  re- 
strained from  disgrace  during  that  excited  period. 

"  Driven  forth  by  poverty,"  says  John  Bright, 
'*  Irishmen  emigrated  in  great  numbers ;  and  in 
whatever  part  of  the  world  an  Irishman  sets  his 
foot,  there  stands  a  bitter,  an  implacable  enemy  of 
ICngland."  Another  Englishman,  Professor  Cairnes, 
says :  "  Men  leaving  their  country  full  of  such  bitter 


THE    GATHERERS  OF  THE    CROP.  3II 

recollections  would  naturally  not  be  forward  to  dis- 
seminate the  most  amiable  idea  respecting  Irish  land- 
lordism and  the  power  which  upholds  it.  I  own  I 
cannot  wonder  that  a  thirst  for  revenge  should  spring 
from  such  calamities ;  that  hatred,  even  undying 
hatred,  for  what  they  could  not  but  regard  as  the 
cause  and  symbol  of  their  misfortunes — English  rule 
in  Ireland — should  possess  the  sufferers ;  that  it 
should  grow  into  a  passion,  into  a  religion  to  be 
preached  with  fanatic  zeal  to  their  kindred  and 
bequeathed  to  their  posterity — perhaps  not  the 
less  effectually  that  it  happened  to  be  their  only 
legacy." 

That  was  the  only  legacy  Michael  Davitt  carried 
from  the  eviction  scene  to  the  English  factory.  He 
did  not  nurse  the  brutal  sight  to  inspire  his  manhood 
with  a  thirst  for  revenge,  but  he  studied  the  social 
condition  of  the  Irish  peasantry  for  the  purpose  of 
discovering  in  what  way,  by  what  method,  they 
might  be  emancipated  from  the  slavery  of  land- 
lordism— a  slavery  deeper  than  any  which  the  feu- 
dal barons  had  imposed  on  the  meanest  of  their 
dependants,  who,  in  exchange  for  labor  or  military 
service,  were  sure  of  protection ;  meaner  than  the 
slavery  in  which  the  negro  was  held  in  the  Southern 
States  of  the  American  Union.  The  black  slave  had 
food  enough ;  the  Irish  tenantry  died,  to  the  number 
of  millions,  of  starvation.  The  black  slave  was  in  a 
climate  which  required  little  clothing,  and  he  had 
enough ;  the  Irish  tenantry  have  perished  in  thou- 


312  THE  GATHERERS  OF  THE  CROP. 

sands  from  nakedness  and  exposure.  The  black 
slave  always  had  shelter;  the  Irish  tenants  have 
been  thrust  by  bayonets  out  of  their  cottages  into 
the  highways  and  left  to  die  under  the  pitiless  sky. 
The  black  slave  had  not  the  gnawing  consciousness 
that  his  master's  land  was  his  land :  he  was  born  a 
slave  ;  the  Irish  tenant,  even  when  he  could  not  read, 
knew  the  traditions  of  the  confiscations,  and  he  en- 
dured the  agony  of  believing  that  the  land  off  which 
he  was  driven  through  no  fault  of  his  own  belonged 
by  right  to  his  people  and  that  he  should  have  a 
share  of  its  fruits.  The  slave's  labor  was  confiscated 
by  his  master ;  so  was  the  labor  of  the  Irish  tenant. 
But  the  slave  always  had  subsistence  out  of  his 
labor ;  the  Irish  tenant  had  not.  Was  it  marvellous 
that  while  the  sentiment  of  two  continents  was  heated 
by  the  emancipation  of  the  black  slave  in  America 
the  son  of  the  evicted  Irish  tenant  should  dream  of 
the  emancipation  of  the  Irish  peasantry  ? 

Success  is  the  only  thing  in  this  life  which  defies 
criticism.  Had  the  movement  of  forty  years  ago  for 
the  repeal  of  the  legislative  union  succeeded,  O'Con- 
nell  would  be  deemed  another  Washington.  The  re- 
peal movement  failed ;  criticism  is  glib  with  reasons 
for  the  failure.  The  rash  and  silly  attempt  of  Robert 
Emmet,  the  too  sanguine  ardor  of  Tone,  the  enthu- 
siasts of  '48,  all  failed,  each  failure  doing  Ireland 
some  good  by  teaching  the  people  patience  and  the 
strategy  of  incessantly  worrying  an  enemy  who  can- 
not be  fought.     Had  any  of  these  episodes  bloomed 


THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP.  313 

into  successful  revolution,  criticism  would  apothe- 
osize those  whose  failure  it  derides.  Fenianism  failed 
— not  utterly,  indeed,  for  it  taught  the  people  three 
lessons :  the  folly  of  premature  attempts,  the  cruelty 
of  wasting  precious  lives  and  blasting  happy  homes, 
the  worthlessness  of  sublime  sacrifices  for  Ireland 
made  on  the  scaffolds  of  Great  Britain.  But  when 
its  ranks  were  first  formed  it  attracted  many  a  young 
Irishman  whose  heart  was  full  of  fire,  whose  head 
was  hot  with  the  memory  of  personal  and  national 
wrong ;  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  Michael  Davitt, 
one-armed  but  otherwise  strong  and  able  to  do  a 
man's  part,  should  have  become  a  member  of  the 
organization.  That  he  ever  committed  any  act  of 
treason  need  not  be  denied :  he  never  had  the  op- 
portunity. But  the  spy  and  the  informer  were  at 
work ;  it  was  true  that  he  attended  secret  meetings. 
He  was  arrested  in  London  in  1870;  the  infamous 
traitor  Corydon  was  the  witness  against  him. 

Had  Davitt  actually  been  guilty  of  the  offence 
charged,  he  would  have  manfully  avowed  it  at  the 
bar,  as  did  Emmet,  as  did  Mackay.  A  man  who 
joins  an  organization  avowedly  revolutionary  is  pre- 
pared to  accept  the  consequences  of  his  conduct ;  and 
the  Irish  revolutionists,  if  impracticables  sometimes, 
have  never  been  cowards.  Corydon  swore  that  he 
had  been  at  several  meetings  where  Davitt  was  pres- 
ent, and  had  heard  him  arrange  the  plans  for  the  cap- 
ture of  Chester  Castle ;  Davitt  declared  on  oath  that 
he  was  not  at  the  meetings  described  by  Corydon, 


314  THE    GATHERERS  OF   THE    CROP. 

whose  perjuries  in  relation  to  others  were  already 
exposed ;  but  the  government  was  bound  to  convict, 
with  or  without  testimony,  and  Davitt  was  sentenced 
to  penal  servitude  for  fifteen  years.  John  Wilson,  an 
Englishman,  who  was  not  connected  in  any  manner 
with  the  organization,  and  was  wholly  innocent  even 
of  treasonable  intentions,  was  found  suspiciously  in 
Davitt's  company,  and  was  sentenced  with  him. 
Knowing  his  innocence  and  feeling  deeply  the  pain- 
ful situation  in  which  Wilson's  family  would  be  left, 
Davitt  arose  and  addressed  the  court  in  his  behalf. 
He  affirmed  Wilson's  innocence,  and,  finding  that  of 
no  avail,  asked  that  the  Englishman's  sentence  be 
added  to  his  own,  that  he  might  be  spared  to  his 
family.  His  appeal  was  not  wholly  unheeded  :  Wil- 
son's sentence  was  lightened. 

An  incident  which  occurred  just  when  his  trial  was 
about  to  begin,  and  which  illustrates  the  disposition 
of  the  British  government  to  be  fair  to  Irish  political 
prisoners,  deserves  to  be  reproduced  here :  "  A  few 
days  previous  to  being  committed  for  trial  I  drew  up 
instructions  for  my  solicitor  as  to  the  mode  of  my 
defence,  and  this  I  had  done  in  exact  accordance 
with  the  rules  suspended  in  my  cell;  which  rules  also 
specified  that  such  instructions  could  be  handed  by 
prisoners  to  their  legal  advisers  without  previous  in- 
spection by  the  governor  or  other  prison  officials. 
When  my  solicitor's  clerk  visited  me  for  the  purpose 
of  receiving  those  instructions,  I  handed  him  the  en- 
velope containing  them  in  the  presence  of  the  warder 


THE    GATHERERS   OF   THE    CROP.  315 

who  presided  at  the  interview,  and  who  had  brought 
me  from  my  cell  to  the  visitors'  or  solicitors'  room. 
Two  days  afterward  I  was  again  visited  by  my  solicit- 
or's clerk,  and  astounded  to  hear  that  the  governor 
had  demanded  my  letter  after  the  previous  visit,  as 
the  officer  had  reported  that  he  saw  me  draw  a  plan 
of  the  prison  upon  a  piece  of  paper  and  give  the  same 
to  the  clerk !  When  I  saw  the  governor  on  the  fol 
lowing  morning  I  demanded  an  explanation  of  this 
strange  proceeding,  and  had  to  remain  satisfied  with 
being  told  that  it  was  the  officer's  fault,  and  that  if  I 
had  no  objection  to  his  (the  governor's)  reading  my 
letter  it  would  be  given  to  my  solicitor.  I  replied 
that  I  had  not  the  least  objection,  owing  to  what  the 
officer  had  reported,  but  that  I  protested  against  the 
whole  proceeding  as  unfair  and  directly  opposed  to 
the  rules  hung  up  in  my  cell.  Now  mark  what  tran- 
spired within  those  two  days.  A  sensational  par- 
agraph had  appeared  in  one  of  the  London  dailies  an- 
nouncing that  another  plot  had  been  discovered  to 
blow  up  the  house  of  detention,  and  that  on  this  oc- 
casion it  would  be  attempted  from  within  the  prison. 
It  is  unnecessary  to  say  what  effect  this  would  have 
upon  the  public  mind  and  how  small  the  chance  would 
be  of  my  obtaining  an  unprejudiced  jury  and  an  im- 
partial trial  in  London  after  this.  Two  great  points 
had  by  this  heartless  canard  been  made  against  me : 
the  plan  of  my  defence  had  been  discovered,  and  the 
public  feeling  directed  adversely  toward  me  by  the  re- 
port that  I  had  intended  to  effect  another  explosion." 


3l6  777^    GATHERERS  OF  THE    CROP 

Before  citing  any  passage  from  Davitt's  account 
of  the  treatnient  he  received  in  prison  it  is  proper  to 
consider  what  manner  of  man  the  son  of  the  evicted 
peasant  had  become.  Of  irreproachable  character, 
without  a  vice  or  careless  habit,  his  leisure  had  been 
wholly  devoted  to  the  cultivation  of  his  mind.  He 
had  studied  political  economy  thoroughly ;  and  it  is 
a  circumstance  which  has  almost  escaped  attention 
that  the  principles  he  has  laid  down  in  the  land-re- 
form agitation  are  those  he  imbibed  from  the  works 
of  English  moral  and  social  philosophers  and  polit- 
ical economists.  We  shall  discover  this  when  we 
reach  his  writings  and  speeches.  He  had  studied 
the  status  and  history  of  the  peasant-farmer  on  the 
Continent,  and  to  do  this  more  satisfactorily  had  ac- 
quired several  languages.  He  is  fond  of  music  and 
poetry,  and  has  written  smooth  and  graceful  verse. 
His  industry  had  supplied  him  with  the  comforts  of 
life  and  with  the  means  of  indulging  a  refined  taste. 
He  had  committed  no  crime ;  he  was  only  a  political 
conspirator.  To  such  a  man  what  must  have  been 
the  loathsome  situation  in  which  the  barbarity  of  his 
jailers  soon  placed  him  ?  Of  tall,  active  figure,  his 
face  is  pale,  his  features  regular,  his  head  large,  well 
shaped  and  intellectual,  his  eyes,  hair  and  beard,  dark. 
He  impresses  one  as  being  reserved,  passionate  and 
obstinate.  He  speaks  flowingly,  using  excellent  dic- 
tion, and  when  in  public  discussion  exhibits  a  strong, 
homely,  rugged  and  compact  style,  never  employing 
mere  rhetoric,  never  failing  to  make  himself  under- 


.ii'm'is-"'>;j 


J-  ^-f:S!\ry^firdfj:iM^^i^'j 


2Q  (Reverse  of  Medal.) 

THE  LAND- LEAGUE  BADGE  AND  MEDAL. 


THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP.  319 

stood.  His  voice  is  clear,  but  not  powerful ;  his 
gesticulation  scant,  but  appropriate.  His  speeches 
are  uniform  in  their  solidity  and  simplicity  of  struc- 
ture. In  private  intercourse  he  is  modest,  courteous 
and  refined,  slightly  given  to  humor  at  times ;  but 
his  habit  of  thought  is  essentially  serious.  Unmar- 
ried, his  devotion  to  the  peasantry  of  his  country  is 
absolute ;  he  has  no  aim  but  their  emancipation,  and 
in  consecrating  his  life  to  this  he  makes  a  self-sac- 
rifice whose  completeness  is  as  apparent  as  its  motive 
is  pure.  It  is  a  sacrifice  which  hopelessly  excludes 
human  reward.  His  only  compensation  thus  far  has 
been  to  spend  nearly  ten  of  the  best  years  of  his  life 
in  prison. 

He  is  writing  of  Millbank  prison  :  "  A  description 
of  the  cells,  together  with  an  account  of  the  daily 
routine  and  work  that  had  to  be  done,  will  suffice  to 
form  some  idea  of  what  punishment  has  to  be  borne 
in  what  is  termed  ^probation  class.'  The  cells  are 
some  nine  or  ten  feet  long  by  about  eight  wide,  stone 
floor,  bare  whitewashed  walls,  with  neither  table  nor 
stool,  and  of  course  with  no  fire  to  warm  by  its  cheer- 
ful glow  the  oppressing  chilliness  of  such  a  place. 
My  bedstead  was  made  of  three  planks  laid  parallel 
to  each  other  at  the  end  of  the  cell  and  raised  from 
the  stone  floor  but  three  inches  at  the  foot  and  six  at 
the  head  of  this  truly  low  couch.  The  only  seat  al- 
lowed me  was  a  bucket  which  contained  the  water 
supplied  me  for  washing  purposes,  this  bucket  having 
a  cover,  so  as  to  answer  the  double  purpose  of  water- 


320  THE   GATHERERS   OF  THE    CROP. 

holder  and  stool.  The  height  of  this  sole  article  of 
furniture  allowed  me  was  fourteen  inches  exactly,  in- 
cluding the  lid,  and  on  this  *  repentance-stool '  I  was 
compelled  to  sit  at  work  ten  hours  at  least  each  day 
for  ten  months. 

"  The  punishment  this  entails  upon  a  tall  man  can 
be  easily  conceived.  The  recumbent  posture  and  bent 
chest  necessary  while  picking  oakum,  with  nothing  to 
lean  one's  back  against  to  obtain  a  momentary  relief, 
is  distressing  in  the  extreme.  The  effect  upon  me,  in 
addition  to  inducing  a  weakness  in  my  chest,  was  sin- 
gular, but  not  surprising. 

"  On  entering  Millbank  my  height  was  exactly  six 
feet,  as  measured  by  the  prison  standard  for  that  pur- 
pose; but  on  my  departure  for  Dartmoor,  ten  months 
after,  I  had  illustrated  the  saying  that  some  people 
can  p^row  downward,  for  I  then  measured  but  five 
feet  ten  and  a  half  inches. 

"  The  bedding  supplied  was  miserably  insufficient 
during  the  winter  months ;  and  owing  to  this  and 
the  sitting  posture  during  the  day,  with  feet  resting 
upon  cold  flags,  with  no  fire  and  with  a  prohibition 
against  walking  in  the  cell,  many  prisoners  have  lost 
the  use  of  their  limbs  from  the  effects  of  a  Millbank 
winter.  But  one  hour's  exercise  in  the  prison-yard 
was  allowed  each  day,  and  that  was  forfeited  if  the 
weather  proved  unfavorable.  Owing  to  my  health 
beginning  to  break  down,  I  was  permitted  an  extra 
half-hour's  exercise  after  I  had  been  eight  months  in 
the  prison.     This  was  granted  by  the  doctor's  order. 


rilE   GATHERERS  OF  THE    CROP.  32 1 

"  I  had  to  rise  at  six  each  morning,  fold  up  my  bed 
very  neatly,  and  afterward  wash  and  scrub  my  cell- 
floor  quite  clean  with  brush  and  stone  used  for  that 
purpose.  This  washing  and  scrubbing  was,  I  need 
scarcely  remark,  very  distressing  upon  me,  owing  to 
my  physical  infirmity ;  but  I  was  compelled  to  do  it, 
nevertheless,  once  each  day  during  the  whole  term 
of  my  imprisonment.  After  cells  were  cleaned  in  the 
manner  I  have  described  work  was  then  commenced, 
and  continued  until  a  quarter  to  nine  at  night,  allow- 
ing, of  course,  for  meals,  exercise,  and  prayers  in 
chapel  each  morning. 

"  The  work  I  was  put  to  in  this  prison  was  coir- 
and  oakum-picking.  I  was  not  tasked,  but  had  to 
sit  working  all  day  and  pick  a  reasonable  share  of 
my  coir  or  oakum,  as  the  case  might  be.  When  I 
inquired,  on  being  first  ordered  to  this  sort  of  work, 
how  I  could  possibly  do  it  with  but  a  limited  number 
of  fingers  at  my  disposal,  I  was  told  by  the  warder 
that  he  had  known  several  '  blokes '  with  but  one 
hand  who  had  managed  to  pick  oakum  very  well 
with  their  teeth.  As  I  declined  to  use  my  teeth  to 
tear  old  ropes  to  pieces,  I  had  to  do  the  work  as  best 
I  could. 

"During  the  whole  of  my  stay  in  Millbank  m.y 
conversation  with  prisoners — at  the  risk  of  being 
punished,  of  course — as  also  with  warders  and 
chaplains,  would  not  occupy  me  twenty  minutes  to 
repeat  could  I  collect  all  the  scattered  words  spoken 
by  me  in  the  whole  of  that  ten  months.     I  recollect 


322  THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP. 

many  weeks  going  by  without  my  exchanging  a  word 
with  a  single  human  being. 

"  The  food  allowed  me  for  daily  rations  was  as  fol- 
lows :  Breakfast,  eight  ounces  of  bread  and  three- 
quarters  of  a  pint  of  cocoa ;  dinner,  four  ounces  of 
meat  (including  bone)  four  days  a  week,  with  six 
ounces  of  bread  and  a  pound  of  potatoes ;  one  day 
in  the  week  I  was  allowed  a  pint  of  shin-of-beef  soup 
in  lieu  or  meat,  and  on  another  one  pound  of  suet- 
pudding  ditto.  Dinner  on  Sunday  was  twelve  ounces 
of  bread,  four  ounces  of  cheese  and  a  pint  of  water, 
and  for  supper  each  night  I  received  six  ounces  of 
bread  and  a  pint  of  *  skilly,'  containing — or  rather 
supposed  to  contain— two  ounces  of  oatmeal. 

**  This  was  the  ordinary  prison  allowance. 

"After  subsisting  for  three  months  on  this  diet  I 
applied  to  the  doctor  for  a  little  more  food,  on  the 
ground  that  I  was  losing  weight  owing  to  the  insuf- 
ficiency of  the  quantity  allowed ;  but  my  application 
was  of  no  avail. 

"  The  books  supplied  me  while  in  Millbank  were 
almost  exclusively  religious,  and  but  one  library- 
book  was  allowed  to  each  prisoner  in  a  fortnight. 

*'  I  asked  to  have  mine  changed  once  a  week,  but 
was  promptly  told  I  could  not  be  favored  beyond 
other  prisoners.  The  class  of  books  supplied  to  the 
Catholic  prisoners  was  such  as  would  be  suitable  to 
children  or  people  ignorant  of  the  truths  of  the  Cath- 
olic faith. 

"  I  had  often  no  book  to  read  but  one  that  might 


THE    GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP.  323 

answer  the  requirements  of  a  child,  such  as  the  his- 
tory of  '  naughty  Fanny '  or  '  Grandmother  Betty,' 
and  like  productions,  which,  though  doubtless  good 
in  their  way,  were  not  what  could  lessen  the  dreary 
monotony  of  such  an  existence. 

"A  circumstance  in  connection  with  the  situation 
of  Millbank  may  (taken  with  what  I  have  already  said 
on  that  prison)  give  some  faint  idea  of  what  confine- 
ment there  really  means.  Westminster  Tower  clock 
is  not  far  distant  from  the  penitentiary ;  so  that  its 
every  stroke  is  as  distinctly  heard  in  each  cell  as 
if  it  were  situated  in  one  of  the  prison-yards.  At 
each  quarter  of  an  hour,  day  and  night,  it  chimes  a 
bar  of  the  '  Old  Hundredth,'  and  those  solemn  tones 
strike  on  the  ears  of  the  lonely  listeners  like  the  voice 
of  some  monster  singing  the  funeral-dirge  of  Time. 

"  Oft  in  the  lonely  watches  of  the  night  has  it  re- 
minded me  of  the  number  of  strokes  I  was  doomed 
to  listen  to,  and  of  how  slowly  those  minutes  were 
creeping  along.  The  weird  chant  of  Westminster 
clock  will  ever  haunt  my  memory  and  recall  that 
period  of  my  imprisonment  when  I  first  had  to  im- 
plore divnne  Providence  to  preserve  my  reason  and 
save  me  from  the  madness  which  seemed  inevitable, 
through  mental  and  corporal  tortures  combined. 

"  That  human  reason  should  give  way  under  such 
adverse  influences  is  not,  I  think,  to  be  wondered  at ; 
and  many  a  still  living  wreck  of  manhood  can  refer 
to  the  silent  system  of  Millbank  and  its  pernicious 
surroundings  as  the  cause  of  his  debilitated  mind. 


324  THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP. 

f  "  It  was  here  that  Edward  Duffy  died,  and  where 
Richard  Burke  and  Martin  Hanly  Carey  were  for  a 
time  obhvious  of  their  sufferings  from  temporary  in- 
sanity, and  where  Daniel  Reddin  was  paralyzed.  It 
was  here  where  Thomas  Ahern  first  showed  symp- 
toms of  madness,  and  was  put  in  dark  cells  and 
strait-jacket  for  a  'test'  as  to  the  reality  of  these 
symptoms.  Ten  years  have  passed  their  long  and 
silent  courses  since  then,  but  that  same  Thomas 
Ahern  is  still  a  prisoner  and  his  mind  is  still  tot- 
tering on  the  brink  of  insanity.  I  have  anxiously 
watched  him  drifting  toward  this  fate  for  the  past 
six  years,  unable  to  render  him  any  assistance,  and 
I  can  predict  that  if  he  is  not  soon  liberated  he  will 
exchange  Dartmoor  for  Broadmoor  lunatic  prison, 
like  so  many  other  victims  of  penal  servitude." 

From  Millbank,  Mr.  Davitt  was  transferred  to 
Dartmoor,  in  the  barren  Devonshire  moors ;  he  was 
detained  there  six  years  and  six  months.  An  ex- 
tract from  his  account  of  the  treatment  he  received 
there  will  serve  as  a  description  of  the  boasted  Eng- 
lish prison  system : 

"  So  much  attention  having  been  directed  to  these 
veritable  iron  cages  by  the  exposure  of  poor  McCar- 
thy's treatment  and  his  confinement  in  such  cells,  I 
purpose  giving  an  accurate  description  of  them,  and 
removing  any  doubts,  if  such  exist,  as  to  the  account 
already  given  of  their  size,  construction  and  venti- 
lation. The  dimensions  of  one  of  them  will  answer 
for  that  of  the  whole,  as  they  are  uniform  in  almost 


THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP.  325 

every  respect.     Length,  seven  feet  exactly;  width, 
four  feet ;  and  height,  seven  feet  one  or  two  inches. 
The  sides  (or  frames)  of  all  are  of  corrugated  iron, 
and  the  floor  is  a  slate  one.     These  cells  are  ranged 
in  tiers  or  wards  in  the  centre  of  a  hall,  the  tiers  be- 
ing one  above  another,  to  the  height  of  four  wards, 
the  floors  of  the  three  upper  tiers  of  cells  forming 
the  ceilings  or  tops  of  those  immediately  beneath 
them.     Each  ward  or  tier  contains  in  length  forty- 
two  cells,  giving  a  total  of  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
eight  for  one  hall.      The  sole  provision   made   for 
ventilating  these  cells  is  an  opening  of  two  and  a 
half  or  three  inches  left  at  the  bottom  of  each  door. 
There  is  no  opening  into  the  external  air  from  any 
of  those  cells  in  Dartmoor,  and  the  air  admitted  into 
the  hall  has  to  traverse  the  width  of  the  same  to 
enter  the  hole  under  the  cell-doors.     In  the  cells  on 
the  first  three  tiers  or  wards  there  are  about  a  dozen 
small  perforations  in  the  corner  of  each,  for  the  es- 
cape of  vitiated  air;  but  in  those  on  the  top  or  fourth 
ward — or,  speaking  more  confidently,  in  those   on 
that  ward  in  which  I  was  located  a  portion  of  my 
time — there  were  no  such  perforations,  no  possible 
way  of  escape  for  foul  air  except  where  most  of  it 
entered  as  '  pure,'  under  the  cell-door.     In  the  heat 
of  summer  it  was  almost  impossible  to  breathe   in 
these  top  cells,  so  close  and  foul  would  the  air  be- 
come from  the  improper  ventilation  of  the  cells  be- 
low, allowing  the  breathed  air  in  each  cell  to  mix 
with  that  in  the  hall  and  thus  ascend  to  the  top. 


326  THE    GATHERERS  OF  THE  CROP. 

m 

"  I  on  one  occasion  begged  the  governor  of  Dart- 
moor to  remove  me  from  such  a  situation,  for  the 
additional  reason  to  those  I  have  given  that  I  had 
not  sufficient  hght  to  read  in  the  cell  I  was  in ;  but 
-  I  begged  in  vain.  I  was,  however,  soon  after  re- 
moved to  a  lower  tier,  after  foul  eruptions  began  to 
break  out  upon  my  body  through  the  impure  air  I 
had  been  breathing.  It  has  been  since  denied  by 
Chatham  prison  officials  that  Charles  McCarthy 
ever  slept  with  his  bed  across  the  inside  of  his 
cell-door  in  order  to  catch  sufficient  air  to  breathe. 
From  my  own  experience  I  can  fully  believe  the 
necessity  of  his  doing  so,  as  it  was  quite  common 
in  Dartmoor  for  prisoners  to  sleep  with  their  heads 
toward  the  door  for  a  similar  reason;  and  I  have 
often,  in  the  summer  season,  done  this  myself,  and 
had  repeatedly  to  go  on  my  knees  and  put  m.y 
mouth  to  the  bottom  of  the  door  for  a  little  air. 

"  The  light  admitted  to  those  ordinary  iron  ceils 
is  scarcely  sufficient  to  read  by  in  the  daytime ;  and 
should  a  fog  prevail,  it  would  be  impossible  to  read 
in  half  of  them.  The  cells  are  fitted  with  a  couple 
of  plates  of  thick  intransparent  glass  about  eighteen 
inches  long  by  six  inches  wide  each,  and  the  light 
is  transmitted  through  this  *  window '  from  the  hall, 
and  not  from  the  extern  of  the  prison.  I  have  often 
laid  the  length  of  my  body  on  the  cell-floor  and 
placed  my  book  under  the  door  to  catch  sufficient 
light  to  read  it. 

"  The  food  in  Dartmoor  prison  I  found  to  be  the 


THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP.  329 

very  worst  in  quality  and  the  filthiest  in  cooking  of 
any  of  the  other  places. I  had  been  in.  The  quantity 
of  daily  rations  was  the  same  as  in  Millbank,  with 
the  difference  of  four  ounces  of  bread  more  each  day 
and  one  of  meat  less  in  the  week.  The  quality,  as  I 
have  already  remarked,  is  inferior  to  that  of  any  other 
prison ;  but  from  about  November  till  May  it  is  sim- 
ply execrable,  the  potatoes  being  often  unfit  to  eat 
and  rotten  cow-carrots  occasionally  substituted  for 
other  food.  To  find  black  beetles  in  soup,  *  skilly,' 
bread  and  tea  was  quite  a  common  occurrence ;  and 
some  idea  can  be  formed  of  how  hunger  will  recon- 
cile a  man  to  look  without  disgust  upon  the  most 
filthy  objects  in  nature  when  I  state  as  a  fact  that  I 
have  often  discovered  beetles  in  my  food  and  have 
eaten  it,  after  throwing  them  aside,  without  expe- 
riencing much  revulsion  of  feeling  at  the  sight  of 
such  loathsome  animals  in  my  victuals.  Still,  I  have 
often  come  in  from  work  weak  with  fatigue  and  hun- 
ger and  found  it  impossible  to  eat  the  putrid  meat  or 
stinking  soup  supplied  me  for  dinner,  and  had  to  re- 
turn to  labor  again  after  *  dining '  on  six  ounces  of 
bad  bread. 

"  It  was  quite  a  common  occurrence  in  Dartmoor 
for  men  to  be  reported  and  punished  for  eating  can- 
dles, boot-oil,  and  other  repulsive  articles;  and,  not- 
withstanding that  a  highly  offensive  smell  is  purposely 
given  to  prison-candles  to  prevent  their  being  eaten 
instead  of  burned,  men  are  driven  by  a  system  of 
half-starvation  into  an  animal-like  voracity,  and  any- 


330  THE   GATHERERS   OF  THE    CROP. 

thing  that  a  dog  would  eat  is  nowise  repugnant  to 
their  taste.  I  have  seen  men  eat  old  poultices  found 
buried  in  heaps  of  rubbish  I  was  assisting  in  carting 
away,  and  have  seen  bits  of  candle  pulled  out  of  the 
prison  cesspool  and  eaten  after  the  human  soil  was 
wiped  off  them ! 

"  The  labor  I  was  first  put  to  was  stone-breaking, 
that  being  considered  suitable  work  for  non-able- 
bodied,  prisoners.  I  was  put  to  this  employment  in 
a  large  shed,  along  with  some  eighty  or  ninety  more 
prisoners ;  but,  my  hand  becoming  blistered  by  the 
action  of  the  hammer  after  I  had  broken  stones  for  a 
week,  I  was  unable  to  continue  at  that  work,  and  was 
consequently  put  to  what  is  termed  *  cart-labor.' 
This  sort  of  work  is  very  general  in  Dartmoor,  and 
I  may  as  well  give  some  description  of  it. 

"  Eight  men  constitute  a  '  cart-party,'  and  have  an 
officer  over  them  armed  with  a  staff  if  working  with- 
in the  prison-walls,  and  with  a  rifle  and  accompanied 
by  an  armed  guard  if  employed  outside.  Each  man 
in  the  cart-party  is  supplied  with  a  collar,  which  is 
put  over  the  head  and  passes  from  the  right  or  left 
shoulder  under  the  opposite  arm,  and  is  then  hooked 
to  the  chain  by  means  of  which  the  cart  is  drawn 
about.  The  cart-party  to  which  I  was  attached  was 
employed  in  carting  stones,  coals,  manure  and  rub- 
bish of  all  descriptions.  In  drawing  the  cart  along 
each  prisoner  has  to  bend  forward  and  pull  with  all 
his  strength,  or  the  warder  who  is  driving  will  threat- 
en to  *  run  him  in,'  or  report  him  for  idleness.     It 


rilE   GATHERERS   OF  THE   CROP.  33 1 

was  our  work  to  supply  all  parts  of  the  prison — 
workshops,  officers'  mess-room,  cook-house,  etc. — 
with  coals,  and  I  was  often  drawing  these  about  in 
rain  and  sleet  with  no  fire  to  warm  or  dry  myself 
after  a  wetting.  I  was  only  a  few  months  at  this  sort 
of  work,  as  I  met  with  a  slight  accident  by  a  collar 
hurting  the  remnant  of  my  right  arm,  and  was  in 
consequence  of  this  excused  from  cart-labor  by  the 
doctor's  order.  I  was  again  set  to  breaking  gran- 
ite, and  remained  at  that  job  during  the  winter  of 
1870-71. 

*'  I  may  remark  that  in  June,  when  I  was  first  put 
to  stone-breaking,  I  was  employed  in  a  shed,  but  dur- 
ing the  winter  I  was  compelled  to  work  outside  in  the 
cold  and  damp,  ^o^^  weather.  I  was  left  at  this 
work  until  spring,  and  was  then  removed  to  a  task 
from  the  effects  of  which  I  believe  I  will  never  com- 
pletely recover.  My  health  on  entering  prison  was 
excellent,  never  having  had  any  sickness  at  any  pre- 
vious period  of  my  life.  The  close  confinement  and 
insufficient  food  in  Millbank  had  told,  of  course,  on 
my  constitution,  though  not  to  any  very  alarming 
extent ;  but  the  task  I  was  now  put  to  laid  the  germs 
of  the  heart  and  lung  disease  I  have  since  been  suffer- 
ing from.     This  task  was  putrid-bone  breaking. 

"  On  the  brink  of  the  prison  cesspool,  in  which  all 
the  soil  of  the  whole  establishment  is  accumulated 
for  manure,  stands  a  small  building,  some  twenty  feet 
long  by  about  ten  broad,  known  as  the  *  bone-shed.' 
The  floor  of  this  shed  is  sunk  some  three  feet  lower 


332  THE  GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP. 

than  the  ground  outside,  and  is  on  a  level  with  the 
pool  which  laves  the  wall  of  the  building.  All  the 
bones  accruing  from  the  meat-supply  of  the  prison 
were  pounded  into  dust  in  this  shed,  and  during  the 
summer  of  1872  (excepting  five  weeks  spent  in  Ports- 
mouth prison)  this  was  my  employment.  These  bones 
have  often  lain  putrefying  for  v/eeks  in  the  broiling 
heat  of  the  summer  sun  ere  they  were  brought  in  to 
be  broken.  The  stench  arising  from  their  decompo- 
sition, together  with  the  noxious  exhalations  from 
the  action  of  the  sun's  rays  on  the  cesspool  outside, 
no  words  could  adequately  express  :  it  was  a  veritable 
charnel-house.  It  will  be  noted  that  I  was  at  work 
outside  the  previous  winter,  and  when  the  bright  days 
and  summer  season  came  on  I  was  put  in  a  low  shed 
to  break  putrefying  bones.  The  number  of  prisoners 
at  this  work  varied  from  thirty  to  six,  and  I  may  re- 
mark that  the  majority  of  these  were  what  are  termed 

*  doctor's  men,'  or  prisoners  unable  to  perform  the 
ordinary  prison-labor.  When  all  the  bones  would 
be  pounded,  we  would  then  be  employed  in  and 
around  the  cesspool  mixing  and  carting  manure, 
and  at  various  other  similar  occupations. 

"  I  made  application  to  both  governor  and  doctor 
for  removal  from  this  bone-breaking  to  some  more 
congenial  task,  but  I  would  not  be  transferred  to  any 
other  labor.  After  completing  a  term  of  my  impris- 
onment which  entitled  me  to  a  pint  of  tea  in  lieu  of 

*  skilly '  for  breakfast,  I  was  then  removed  to  a  hard- 
labor  party,  as,  owing  to   my  being  an  invalid,  or 


THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP.  333 

*  doctor's  man,'  I  could  not  claim  the  privilege  of  this 
slight  change  in  diet  without  becoming  attached  to 
some  hard-labor  party,  invalids,  or  *  light-labor  men,' 
not  being  allowed  tea  at  any  stage  of  their  imprison- 
ment. I  very  willingly  consented  to  a  heavier  task^ 
in  order  to  be  removed  from  the  abominable  bone- 
shed,  in  which  I  had  worked  and  sickened  during  the 
summer." 

When  accused  of  subjecting  Irish  political  prison- 
ers to  exceptional  hardship  and  personal  indignities, 
the  government  officials  have  been  vehement  in  their 
denials.  But  Mr.  Davitt  relates  incidents  in  his  prison 
experience  whose  loathsomeness  renders  them  too 
offensive  for  republication ;  and  the  rank  injustice  of 
cruelty  to  him  was  so  much  the  greater  because  he 
never  violated  a  prison  rule,  however  odious  or  oner- 
ous. In  1872  he  was  transferred  to  Portsmouth  prison, 
where  for  a  month  he  endured  frightful  suffering ;  then 
he  was  taken  back  to  Dartmoor.  December  19,  1877, 
he  was  released  on  "  ticket  of  leave  "  for  the  remain- 
ing portion  of  his  sentence. 

Charles  McCarthy,  of  whom  he  speaks,  and  several 
others  were  liberated  soon  afterward.  When  they 
reached  Dublin,  the  delight  of  the  people  was  man- 
ifested in  wild  street-demonstrations,  in  processions, 
public  meetings,  songs  and  speeches.  It  was  clear 
that,  if  the  government  considered  them  felons,  the 
populace  deemed  them  heroes.  At  one  of  the  pub- 
lic receptions  tendered  to  them  the  following  address 
was  presented : 
21 


334  THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE    CROP. 

"address    of   the   people   of    DUBLIN 

"  To  Messrs.  Charles  McCarthy^  Thomas  Chambers^ 
jfoJin  Patrick  0' Brien  and  Michael  Davitt,  on  their 
Release  from  Impiisonment,  suffered  for  Ireland  : 

*'  Fellow-Countrymen  :  We  approach  you,  on 
your  release  from  the  sufferings  which  you  have  for 
many  years  so  cheerfully  and  heroically  borne  for 
our  country  in  the  prisons  of  England,  to  offer  you 
our  warmest  congratulations,  to  bid  you,  with  all 
the  fervor  and  affection  of  our  hearts,  welcome 
home  to  Ireland,  and  to  thank  you  for  your  cou- 
rageous and  uncompromising  devotion  to  the  na- 
tional cause. 

"  Roman  history  reveres  the  tradition  which  tells 
of  the  heroic  self-sacrifice  of  the  patriot  Marcus 
Curtius,  who  saved  the  city  by  casting  himself  into 
the  yawning  abyss  opened  in  the  Forum.  With  a 
self-denying  patriotism  equal  to  his  you  have  made 
an  offering  of  life,  fortune  and  liberty  on  the  altar 
of  your  country ;  and  if  by  such  sacrifices  as  yours 
her  freedom  has  not  been  achieved,  her  honor  has 
been  saved,  the  manhood  of  her  sons  vindicated  and 
a  fund  of  public  virtue  created  amongst  us  which 
will  yet  redeem  and  regenerate  the  land. 

"  Mindful  of  this,  and  of  all  the  horrors  of  penal 
servitude  through  which  you  have  been  condemned 
to  pass,  the  capital  of  your  country  j-ejoices  in  your 
liberation  to-day,  and  stretches  forth  its  hand  to  re- 
ceive you  with  delight  and  gratitude. 


THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP.  335 

"  The  pleasure  which  we  feel,  however,  is  dimin- 
ished by  the  recollection  that  some  of  your  brave 
companions  are  still  held  in  captivity,  and  we  cannot 
conclude  without  expressing  the  hope  that  they  too 
may  soon  be  restored  to  liberty. 

"Wishing  you  every  blessing  and  prosperity  in 
the  future,  and  assuring  you  of  the  gratitude  of  all 
your  countrymen,  we  again  say  to  you  from  our  in- 
most hearts,  Cead  Mille  Failthe. 

"Signed  on  behalf  of  Reception  Committee: 
Charles  S.  Parnell,  M.  P.,  J.  G.  Biggar,  M.  P.,  John 
O'Sullivan,  John  Dillon,  J.  Taafe,  Patrick  Egan; 
Treasurer,  James  Carey;  Hon.  Secretary,  Thomas 
Brennan;  John  Burns,  Robert  Woodward,  R.  J.  Don- 
nelly, Daniel  Curley,  Edmund  Hayes,  J.  Brady." 

Mr.  McCarthy  died  two  days  afterward  from  the 
effects  of  the  brutal  treatment  inflicted  on  him  in  an 
English  model  "  reformatory  "  prison.  He  was  buried 
in  Glasnevin,  and  sixty  thousand  persons  followed  his 
remains  to  the  grave,  their  tears  for  the  death  of  a 
gentle  and  noble  soul  mingling  with  their  execrations 
of  the  government  which  had  killed  him  by  slow- 
torture. 

Mr.  Davitt  visited  various  parts  of  Ireland  and 
was  received  everywhere  with  popular  welcome,  bon- 
fires blazing  on  the  hills  to  announce  his  presence  in 
a  neighborhood.  This  circumstance  inspired  Mr. 
Lowther,  chief  secretary,  to  tell  the  Irish  people  a 
year  later,  when  the  fuel  was  scarce  in  the  West  of 


33^  THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP. 

Ireland,  that  "  they  could  find  plenty  of  turf  to  give 
bonfire  receptions  to  an  ex-convict." 

When  Mr.  Davitt  visited  London  he  was  received 
in  Parliament  by  Mr.  Parnell  and  other  Irish  mem- 
bers, and  devoted  his  time  there  to  securing  the  re- 
lease of  the  political  prisoners  still  detained.  Just 
at  what  period  he  resolved  upon  organizing  the  Irish 
people  for  land  reform  is  not  known ;  he  had  thought 
upon  it  for  years ;  and  if  the  recollections  of  his  own 
family  history  and  his  observation  of  the  wretched 
state  of  the  peasantry  in  general  had  not  awakened 
the  determination  in  his  mind,  his  reading  of  John 
Bright,  Richard  Cobden,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, and  other  English  statesmen  and  economists, 
could  not  have  failed  to  do  so. 

He  sailed  for  America  in  1878,  and  was  soon  in 
consultation  with  the  exiled  Irish  nationalists.  Chief 
among  these  were  Mr.  John  Devoy  and  Mr.  John 
J.  Breslin.  After  frequent  meetings  to  devise  a  plan 
by  which  the  energy  of  the  Irish  people  in  both 
countries  should  be  effectively  put  to  work  for  the 
emancipation  of  the  peasantry,  they  drew  up  and 
transmitted  to  the  Irish  members  of  Parliament  the 
following  proposition  (it  was  the  original  formulation 
of  the  now  historic  movement  to  recover  the  land  of 
Ireland  for  the  Irish  people  and  to  establish  there 
peasant  proprietary) : 

"  First.  Abandonment  of  the  federal  demand,  and 
substitution  of  a  general  declaration  in  favor  of  self- 
government. 


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THE   DEFEAT    OF   OBSTRUCTION   IN   THE   HOUSE   OF   COMMONS. 
Removal  of  Mr.  Parnell  by  order  of  the  Speaker. 


THE    GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP.  339 

"  Second.  Vigorous  agitation  of  the  land  question 
on  the  basis  of  a  peasantry  proprietary,  while  ac- 
cepting concessions  tending  to  abolish  arbitrary 
eviction. 

"  Third.  Exclusion  of  all  sectarian  issues  from  the 
platform, 

"  FoiLrth.  Irish  members  to  vote  together  on  all 
imperial  and  home  questions,  adopt  an  aggressive 
policy  and  energetically  resist  coercive  legislation. 

**  FiftJi.  Advocacy  of  all  struggling  nationalities,  in 
the  British  empire  and  elsewhere." 

In  a  lecture  in  Boston,  December  8,  1878,  Mr. 
Davitt  fully  outlined  the  programme  of  new  agita- 
tion : 

**  First.  The  first  and  indispensable  requisite  in  a 
representative  of  Ireland  in  the  Parliament  of  Eng- 
land to  be  a  public  profession  of  his  belief  in  the 
inalienable  right  of  the  Irish  people  to  self-govern- 
ment, and  recognition  of  the  fact  that  want  of  self- 
government  is  the  chief  want  of  Ireland. 

"  Second.  An  exclusive  Irish  representation  with 
the  view  of  exhibiting  Ireland  to  the  world  in  the 
light  of  her  people's  opinions  and  national  aspira- 
tions, together  with  an  uncompromising  opposition 
to  the  government  upon  every  prejudiced  or  coercive 
policy. 

"  Third.  A  demand  for  the  immediate  improve- 
ment of  the  land  system  by  such  a  thorough  change 
as  would  prevent  the  peasantry  of  Ireland  from  be- 
ing its  victims  in  the  future,  this  change  to  form  the 


340  THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP. 

preamble  of  a  system  of  small  proprietorships  sim- 
ilar to  what  at  present  obtains  in  France,  Belgium 
and  Prussia,  such  land  to  be  purchased  or  held  di- 
rectly from  the  state.  To  ground  this  demand  upon 
the  reasonable  fact  that,  as  the  land  of  Ireland  for- 
merly belonged  to  the  people  (being  but  nominally 
held  in  trust  for  them  by  chiefs  or  heads  of  clans 
elected  for  that  among  other  purposes),  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  government  to  give  compensation  to  the  land- 
lords for  taking  back  that  which  was  bestowed  upon 
their  progenitors  after  being  stolen  from  the  people, 
in  order  that  the  state  can  again  become  the  custo- 
dian of  the  land  for  the  people-owners. 

"  Fourth.  Legislation  for  the  encouragement  of 
Irish  industries  ;  development  of  Ireland's  natural  re- 
sources ;  substitution  as  much  as  practicable  of  cul- 
tivation for  grazing ;  reclamation  of  waste-lands ; 
protection  of  Irish  fisheries  and  improvement  of 
peasant  dwellings. 

^^  Fifth.  Assimilation  of  the  county  to  the  borough 
franchise,  and  reform  of  the  grand-jury  laws,  as  also 
those  affecting  convention  in  Ireland. 

"  Sixth.  A  national  solicitude  on  the  question  of 
education  by  vigorous  efforts  for  improving  and  ad- 
vancing the  same,  together  with  every  precaution  to 
be  taken  against  it  being  made  an  anti-national  one. 

"  Seventh.  The  right  of  the  Irish  people  to  carry 
arms." 

In  a  remarkable  letter  to  a  Dublin  journal,  Mr. 
John   Devoy,   representing   the   Irish   revolutionists, 


THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE    CROP.  34 1 

gave  their  support  to  the  new  movement.  He  said 
touching  the  union  of  all  Irishmen  for  the  recovery 
of  the  land : 

"  The  object  aimed  at  by  the  advanced  national 
party — the  recovery  of  Ireland's  national  independ- 
ence and  the  severance  of  all  political  connection 
with  England — is  one  that  would  require  the  utmost 
efforts  and  the  greatest  sacrifices  on  the  part  of  the 
whole  Irish  people.  Unless  the  whole  Irish  people, 
or  the  great  majority  of  them,  undertake  the  task, 
and  bend  their  whole  energies  to  its  accomplishment 
— unless  the  best  intellect,  the  financial  resources  and 
the  physical  strength  of  the  nation  be  enlisted  in  the 
effort — it  can  never  be  realized.  Even  with  all  these 
things  in  our  favor  the  difficulties  in  our  way  would 
be  enormous ;  but  if  firmly  united  and  ably  led,  we 
could  overcome  them,  and  the  result  achieved  would 
be  worth  the  sacrifice.  I  am  not  one  of  those  who 
despair  of  Ireland's  freedom,  and  am  as  much  in 
favor  of  continuing  the  struggle  to-day  as  some  of 
those  who  talk  loudest  against  constitutional  agita- 
tion. 

"  I  am  convinced  that  the  whole  Irish  people  can 
be  enlisted  in  an  effort  to  free  their  native  land,  and 
that  they  have  within  themselves  the  power  to  over- 
come all  obstacles  in  their  way.  I  feel  satisfied  that 
Ireland  could  maintain  her  existence  as  an  independ- 
ent nation,  become  a  respectable  power  in  Europe, 
provide  comfortably  for  a  large  population  within  her 
borders,  and  rival  England  in  commerce  and  man- 


342  THE   GATHERERS   OF   THE   CROP. 

ufactures.  I  contend  she  can  never  attain  the  devel- 
opment to  which  her  geographical  position,  her  nat- 
ural resources  and  the  moral  and  intellectual  gifts  of 
her  people  entitle  her  without  becoming  complete 
mistress  of  her  own  destinies  and  severing  the  con- 
nection with  England.  But  I  am  also  convinced 
that  one  section  of  the  people  alone  can  never  win 
independence,  and  no  political  party,  no  matter  how 
devoted  or  determined,  can  ever  win  the  support  of 
the  whole  people  if  they  never  come  before  the  pub- 
lic and  take  no  part  in  the  every-day  life  of  the  coun- 
try. I  have  often  said  it  before,  and  I  repeat  it  now 
again,  that  a  mere  conspiracy  will  never  free  Ireland. 
I  am  not  arguing  against  conspiracy,  but  only  point- 
ing out  the  necessity  of  Irish  nationalists  taking  what- 
ever public  action  for  the  advancement  of  the  national 
cause  they  may  find  within  their  reach — such  action 
as  will  place  the  aims  and  objects  of  the  national 
party  in  a  more  favorable  light  before  the  world  and 
help  to  win  the  support  of  the  whole  Irish  people. 

"  No  party  or  combination  of  parties  in  Ireland 
can  ever  hope  to  win  the  support  of  the  majority  of 
the  people  except  it  honestly  proposes  a  radical  ?r- 
forin  of  the  land  system.  No  matter  what  may  be 
said  in  favor  of  individual  landlords,  the  whole  sys- 
tem was  founded  on  robbery  and  fraud  and  has  been 
perpetuated  by  cruelty,  injustice,  extortion  and  hatred 
of  the  people.  The  men  who  got  small  farms  in  the 
times  of  confiscation  settled  down  in  the  country, 
and  their  descendants,  no  matter  what  their  political 


THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP.  343 

party,  are  now  *  bone  of  our  bone ' — have  become 
Irish — and  perform  a  useful  function  in  the  land. 
No  one  thinks  of  disturbing  them.  If  the  landlords 
had  become  Irish  and  treated  the  people  with  hu- 
manity, the  original  robbery  might  be  forgiven, 
though  a  radical  change  in  the  tenure  of  land  must 
come  of  itself  some  day ;  but  when,  as  a  class,  they 
have  simply  done  England's  work  of  rooting  out  the 
Irish  people,  when  the  history  of  landlordism  is  sim- 
ply a  dark  story  of  heartless  cruelty,  of  artificial  fam- 
ine, of  evictions,  of  rags  and  squalid  misery,  there  is 
no  reason  why  we  should  forget  that  the  system  was 
forced  upon  us  by  England,  and  that  the  majority  of 
the  present  landlords  are  the  inheritors  of  the  robber- 
horde  sent  over  by  Elizabeth  and  James  I.,  by  Crom- 
well and  William  of  Orange,  to  garrison  the  country 
for  England.  It  is  the  interest  of  Ireland  that  the 
land  slioiild  be  owned  by  those  who  tUl  the  soil,  and 
this  could  be  reached  without  even  inflicting  hard- 
ship on  those  who  deserve  no  leniency  at  the  hands 
of  the  Irish  people.  A  solution  of  the  land  question 
has  been  reached,  to  a  large  extent,  in  France,  in 
Prussia  and  in  Belgium,  by  enabling  the  occupiers 
to  purchase  their  holdings.  Let  the  Irish  landlords 
be  given  a  last  chance  of  settling  the  Irish  land  ques- 
tion amicably  in  this  manner,  or  wait  for  a  solution 
in  which  they  shall  have  no  part.  Let  a  beginning 
be  made  with  the  absentees,  the  English  lords  and 
the  London  companies  who  hold  stolen  land  in  Ire- 
land, and  there  will  be  enough  of  work  for  some  years 


344  THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP, 

to  come.  Let  evictions  be  stopped  at  all  hazards  and 
the  rooting-out  process  come  to  an  end.  But  I  shall 
be  told  the  English  Parliament  will  never  do  any  of 
these  things.  Then,  I  say,  these  things  must  only 
wait  till  an  Irish  Parliament  can  do  them  better ;  but 
in  the  mean  time  sound  principles  will  have  been 
inculcated  and  the  country  will  be  aroused. 

"  To  those  who  are  alarmed  at  language  like  this 
in  regard  to  the  land  question  I  would  say,  Look  at 
France,  at  Prussia  and  at  Belgium,  and  you  will  find 
that  the  secret  of  their  prosperity  lies  in  the  number 
of  tillers  of  the  soil  who  own  their  holdings.  Listen 
to  the  mutterings  of  the  coming  storm  in  England, 
and  ask  yourselves  what  is  going  to  become  of  the 
land  monopoly  after  a  few  more  years  of  commercial 
and  manufacturing  depression — a  depression  sure  to 
continue,  because  the  causes  of  it  are  on  the  increase. 
The  English  are  a  very  practical  and  a  very  selfish 
people,  and  will  not  let  any  fine  sentiment  stand  in 
the  way  when  they  think  it  is  their  interest  to  redis- 
tribute the  land.  What,  may  I  ask,  would  become 
of  the  Irish  landlords — especially  the  rack-renting, 
evicting  ones — in  case  of  a  social  convulsion  in  Eng- 
land ?  It  is  a  question  which  they  themselves  must 
decide  within  the  next  few  years.  With  them  or 
without  them,  the  question  will  be  settled  before 
long,  and  many  who  now  think  the  foregoing  as- 
sertions extravagant  will  consider  them  very  mod- 
erate indeed  by  and  by." 

Meanwhile,   the   proposition    sent    over    by   Mr 


THE   GATHERERS   OF  THE   CROP.  345 

Davitt  and  the  Irish  nationahsts  in  America  had 
reached  its  destination.  It  was  received  by  the 
Home-Rule  party,  of  which  the  patriot  Irish  mem- 
bers of  the  British  Parhament  were  the  leaders,  and 
foremost  among  these  was  Charles  Stewart  Parnell. 
The  Parnells  were  originally  P2nglish.  As  we  saw  in 
the  chapter  on  "  How  the  People  lost  their  Land," 
some  of  the  English  who  had  obtained  estates  in 
Ireland  from  Elizabeth  were  driven  off  them  by  her 
successors,  who  wished  to  distribute  the  Irish  soil  to 
their  own  favorites  or  for  their  profit,  and  many  of 
the  earlier  English  colonists  had  become  so  attached 
to  their  new  home  and  the  genial  and  kind-hearted 
people  around  them  that  they  were  *'  more  Irish  than 
the  Irish  themselves."  The  English  government 
viewed  this  with  open  alarm,  and  to  prevent  the 
commingling  of  the  natives  and  the  colonists  for- 
bade, in  severe  penalty,  all  intercourse  between  them, 
and  even  confiscated  the  lands  of  any  Englishman 
who  married  an  Irish  wife.  The  beauty  of  the  Irish- 
women and  their  virtues  won  the  heart  of  more  than 
one  English  aristocrat,  who  sacrificed  his  fortune  to 
his  love.  It  was  the  statute  making  an  outlaw  of  the 
Englishman  who  married  an  Irishwoman  that  fur- 
nished Thomas  d'Arcy  McGee  with  the  subject  of 
his  beautiful  little  poem  '*  My  Irish  Wife : " 

"  I  knew  the  law  forbade  the  banns ; 
I  knew  my  king  abhorred  her  race ; 
Who  never  bent  before  their  clans 
Must  bow  before  their  ladies'  grace. 


34^  THE    GATHERERS   OF  THE   CROP, 

Take  all  my  forfeited  domain — 

I  cannot  wage  with  kinsmen  strife — 

Take  knightly  gear  and  noble  name. 
And  I  will  keep  my  Irish  wife."" 

The  estates  which  were  confiscated  for  this  and  other 
offences  against  the  EngUsh  law  were  eagerly  sought 
by  English  and  Scotchmen,  who,  knowing  the  fer- 
tility of  the  soil,  expected  to  become  rich  by  its  cul- 
tivation. Thomas  Parnell  of  Cheshire  bought  one 
of  these  at  the  time  of  the  Restoration,  and  then  the 
family, which  soon  became  "more  Irish  than  the  Irish 
themselves,"  was  planted  in  the  island. 

John  Parnell  had  two  sons,  John  and  Thomas ;  the 
first  became  a  judge,  the  second  a  minister  and  a 
poet.  The  poem  by  which  he  is  best  known  now  is 
"The  Hermit."  The  Parnells  were  and  are  Prot- 
estants. Thomas  drew  a  handsome  income  from  the 
Catholic  Irish  to  whom  he  did  not  preach;  as  he  had 
no  congregation  to  speak  of  to  preach  to,  he  became 
an  absentee,  and  spent  much  of  his  time  in  the  lit- 
erary society  of  London.  He  was  an  intimate  friend 
of  Dean  Swift,  who  used  his  once-powerful  influence 
at  the  English  court  to  advance  the  temporal  interests 
of  Thomas  Parnell. 

John,  the  judge,  married  an  Irish  wife — her  name 
was  Anne  Ward — but  he  was  not  outlawed  on  ac- 
count of  it;  on  the  contrary,  he  was  created  a  baronet 
in  1766.  This  Sir  John  Parnell  had  a  son.  Sir  John, 
who  was  one  of  the  patriots  in  the  Irish  Parliament 
a  hundred  years  ago ;  it  is  he  of  whom  Cornwallis 


S'^^^M 


CtqescIiP  JSi '^SSt;  Tbila. 


MRS.    DELIA   TUDOR    STFWART   PARNELL. 


THE   GATHERERS   OF   THE    CROP.  349 

speaks  in  the  chapter  on  "  How  the  People  lost  their 
Parliament."  His  son,  Sir  Henry  Parnell,  became  a 
member  of  the  British  Parliament  after  the  destruc- 
tion of  that  of  the  Irish,  and  distinguished  himself 
as  a  sympathizer  with  the  miseries  of  his  country- 
men. The  brother  of  Sir  Henry  Parnell,  William,  a 
country  gentleman,  left  a  son  named  John  Henry 
Parnell,  who  while  travelling  in  America  met  Delia 
Tudor  Stewart,  daughter  of  Admiral  Stewart,  *'  Old 
Ironsides."  A  mutual  attachment  followed,  and  they 
were  married  in  Grace  church.  New  York,  by  Rev. 
Dr.  Taylor.  Charles  Stewart  Parnell  is  their  son. 
He  was  born  in  1846,  at  Avondale,  Rathdrum,  the 
estate  which  he  now  owns,  and  received  his  early 
education  in  England.  Sickness  compelled  his  family 
to  bring  him  back  to  the  milder  air  of  his  native  land, 
and  when  he  had  fully  recovered  he  was  sent  over 
again  to  England  and  placed  under  the  care  of  a 
tutor  to  be  prepared  for  Cambridge,  at  which  he  re- 
mained for  two  years.  In  1 872  he  visited  the  United 
States  as  a  tourist. 

It  is  not  strange  that  he  felt  little  interest  in  the 
affairs  of  his  country.  His  education  and  his  social 
status  had  practically  alienated  him  from  home ;  he 
did  not  imbibe  Irish  sentiments  from  his  English 
schoolmasters,  and  he  heard  no  impassioned  argu- 
ment at  Cambridge  for  the  redress  of  Irish  wrongs. 
English  society  has  always  been  the  deadliest  foe  of 
Irish  nationalism.  Had  Swift  spent  less  time  in 
London  he  would  have  been  a  better  Irishman ;  for, 
22 


350  THE  GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP. 

although  he  did  much  for  the  Irish  tradesman  and  the 
Irish  manufacturer,  he  was  a  religious  bigot  and  as 
violently  opposed  to  extending  political  privileges  to 
four-fifths  of  the  Irish  people  as  he  was  bitter  in  his  de- 
nunciation of  the  restrictive  commercial  laws,  the  chief . 
victims  of  which  in  his  time  were  the  men  of  his  own 
creed.  London  society  tainted  even  Tom  Moore, 
whose  adulation  of  the  aristocracy — who  sneered  at 
him  as  an  Irish  grocer's  son — was  so  flunkeyish  that 
Byron  in  pique  wrote  of  him  the  never-forgotten  taunt, 
"  Tommy  dearly  loves  a  lord." 

The  real  basis  of  the  enduring  fame  of  Moore  rests 
on  his  immortal  Irish  melodies,  and  for  the  resources 
upon  which  he  drew  for  them  he  was  indebted  to  a 
suggestion  by  Robert  Emmet.  Moore  was  not,  how- 
ever, poisoned  by  the  companionship  of  the  enemies 
of  his  country.  It  is  true  that  for  the  birthday  of 
the  prince  of  Wales  he  wrote  ".Our  Prince's  Day" 
to  the  air  of  "  St.  Patrick's  Day,"  and  even  indited 
the  line, 

"  A  curse  on  the  minion  who  calls  us  disloyal," 

to  ingratiate  himself  with  the  princelings  and  snobs 
who  always  constitute  the  convivial  retinue  of  a  king 
that  is  to  be ;  but  he  amply  compensated  for  these  triv- 
ial infidelities,  and  his  verse  was  a  valuable  aid  in 
winning  for  Ireland  the  sympathy  and  the  pity  of 
the  generous  in  every  part  of  the  globe  in  which  the 
love  of  rhythm  and  of  melody  exists. 

A  still  more  remarkable  instance  of  alienation  is 


THE   GATHERERS   OF   THE    CROP.  35  I 

furnished  in  the  person  of  the  newest  of  the  present 
generation  of  poets.  When  Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy 
was  on  trial  for  loving  his  country — he  was  one  of  the 
patriots  of  '48 — among  the  treasonable  articles  read 
by  the  prosecution  was  an  editorial  clipped  from  the 
journal  of  which  he  was  the  conductor.  It  was  a 
bold,  powerful  and  persuasive  denunciation  of  the 
government  of  England  in  Ireland,  and  it  Avas  enough, 
probably,  to  secure  conviction  at  an  earlier  day  and 
to  send  Duffy  to  the  scaffold  of  Robert  Emmet.  But 
when  the  reading  had  been  finished  a  quiet  voice 
spoke  from  the  ladies'  gallery :  "  If  that  be  treason, 
I  am  the  culprit."  The  speaker  was  Lady  Wilde, 
one  of  the  most  eloquent  poets  of  that  brilliant  pe- 
riod, the  mother  of  Oscar  Wilde,  who  has  become  so 
English  in  London  circles  that  in  the  recently-pub- 
lished first  volume  of  his  poems,  whose  pages  are 
full  of  tears  for  the  sorrows  of  other  lands,  the  name 
of  his  own  miserable  country  is  not  mentioned. 

English  society  had  not  Anglicized  Charles  Stewart 
Parnell.  An  incident  which  occurred  in  Manchester 
in  1867  had  set  him  thinking.  An  attempt  had  been 
made  by  a  small  party  of  excited  Irishmen  to  release 
from  a  prison-van  as  it  rolled  through  the  streets  the 
Irish  political  prisoners  enclosed  in  it.  A  pistol- 
ball  was  fired  into  the  lock  of  the  door  to  open  it. 
Three  men,  Allen,  Larkin  and  O'Brien,  were  hung 
for  the  offence  which  George  Washington  commit- 
ted against  the  English  Crown.  They  were  tried  for 
the  murder  of  a  policeman ;  they  were  not  guilty  of 


352  THE  GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP. 

that  crime,  but  they  were  hanged  because  they  were 
convicted  of  loving  Ireland  and  of  hating  her  brutal 
foe.  The  last  words  of  each  were  "  God  save  Ire- 
land !"  These  words  rang  in  the  ears  of  Charles 
Stewart  Parnell  until  he  studied  the  testimony  and 
found  that  the  Manchester  three  had  been  legally 
and  judicially  assassinated.  The  sombre  hours  of 
reflection  which  he  bestowed  on  that  episode  changed 
the  current  of  his  thoughts ;  henceforward  they  flowed 
toward  his  country.  The  elegant  gentleman  became 
the  patriot ;  the  quiet  and  studious  lover  of  the  aes- 
thetic became  the  agitator. 

When  the  proposition  which  the  Irish  nationalists 
in  New  York  sent  to  the  Home  Rulers  reached  them, 
Charles  Stewart  Parnell  was  the  head  of  that  party. 
He  entered  Parliament  as  a  Home  Ruler  in  1875, 
member  for  Meath.  The  following  description  of 
the  man  and  his  manner  is  in  the  main  correct ;  but 
his  experience  in  public  speaking  has  made  him  much 
more  effective  and  interesting  than  he  was  at  the  time 
of  entrance  upon  a  parliamentary  career.  It  is  taken 
from  a  London  journal  not  friendly  to  the  neighbor- 
ing country.     It  was  written  nearly  three  years  ago  : 

" '  If  Parnell  does  not  draw  the  rein,'  remarked  a 
friend  to  me  the  other  day,  *  the  country  will  soon 
have  to  put  him  under  lock  and  key.'  It  is  not  my 
intention  to  justify  the  observation  or  to  discuss  the 
anti-rent  agitation  in  Ireland  in  any  shape,  but  it  seems 
to  me  that  when  a  politician  comes  to  be  regarded  by 
a  great  many  people  as  a  rather  dangerous  man — and 


THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE   CROP.  353 

there  are  a  great  many  people  of  my  friend's  way  of 
thinking — it  is  well  the  country  should  know  some- 
thing about  him. 

"  Now  for  the  man  himself  I  do  not  Know  that 
previous  to  1875  either  Ireland  or  England  had  ever 
heard  of  Mr.  Parnell.  His  father  was  a  quiet,  unob- 
trusive man  of  no  mark  at  all,  except  that  he  was 
once  high  sheriff  for  the  county  of  Meath,  in  which 
the  family  property  is  situated.  The  first  appearance 
of  our  friend  on  any  stage  was  when  he  made  his  bow 
to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons  in  April, 
1875,  with  the  return  for  the  county  of  Meath  in  his 
pocket.  A  tall,  thin,  fair,  studious  young  man  of  nine 
and  twenty  at  that  time,  nobody  then  suspected  in  him 
the  future  leader  of  a  *  party  of  exasperation.'  He  had 
not  long  finished  his  studies  at  Cambridge,  and  pol- 
itics were  practically  an  unknown  field  to  him,  his 
chief  article  of  faith  being  *  Home  Rule.' 

**  That  session,  after  the  manner  of  most  new  mem- 
bers, Mr.  Parnell  was  mute.  He  heard  vote  after  vote 
of  the  estimates  passed,  and  clause  after  clause  of  bills 
discussed  in  committee,  and  said  not  a  word.  The 
idea  of  obstruction  was  then  as  far  from  his  mind  as 
from,  say,  Admiral  Edmonston's.  The  following  ses- 
sion he  began  to  find  his  feet  and  to  interest  himself 
in  small  details  of  estimates,  and  it  seems  to  have 
been  about  this  time,  on  his  seeing  the  success  which 
attended  persistent  criticism,  that  he  thought  of  ob- 
struction. It  was  only  by  degrees,  however,  that  the 
policy  of  obstruction  was  developed,  and  the  House 


354  THE   GATHERERS  OF  THE  CROP. 

itself  is,  perhaps,  in  some  degree  responsible  for  it. 
Everybody  knows  that  the  House,  or  rather  the  min- 
isterial portion  of  it,  is  somewhat  impatient  of  crit- 
icism, especially  of  persistent  criticism,  of  the  esti- 
mates. Dillwyn,  Whitwell  and  a  few  others  have  a 
sort  of  prescriptive  right  to  make  the  same  remarks 
and  ask  the  same  questions  year  after  year ;  but  no 
sooner  does  any  new  member  betray  a  disposition  to 
pry  into  the  secrets  of  the  public  purse  than  the  me- 
chanical majority  proceeds  to  sit  on  him  after  its  own 
fashion.  A  hum  of  conversation  arises  as  soon  as  the 
new  man  gets  upon  his  legs.  The  new  man,  being 
under  the  impression  that  members  are  merely  care- 
less, and  not  malicious,  raises  his  voice ;  the  talkers 
raise  theirs,  till  at  length,  if  the  trial  of  strength  is 
continued  long  enough,  the  House  is  a  perfect  Babel 
of  sound.     This  was  Mr.  Parnell's  experience. 

"  Now,  few  men  have  the  temerity  to  brave  the 
House  of  Commons.  Ninety-nine  members  out  of 
a  hundred,  finding  that  they  cannot  get  a  hearing,  are 
content  to  accept  the  inevitable.  Not  so  Mr.  Parnell. 
Under  a  slim  and  almost  effeminate  exterior  he  has 
an  iron  will.  He  refused  to  be  put  down.  The  more 
the  House  would  not  listen,  the  more  he  would  talk, 
even  although  he  could  not  be  heard  more  than  a 
couple  of  benches  off,  and  his  persistence  gradually 
attracted  the  support  of  the  sympathetic  Biggar  and 
one  or  two  kindred  spirits  in  the  same  direction,  who 
looked  upon  him  as  an  Irish  martyr.  By  and  by  he 
began  to  retaliate  by  talking  when  he  had  nothing  to 


THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP.  355 

say,  and  so  during  the  sessions  of  1877  and  1878  the 
merits  of  obstruction  as  an  engine  for  extorting  con- 
cessions from  the  government  gradually  dawned  upon 
him  and  his  faithful  adherents,  whose  appearance  in 
the  character  of  financial  and  administrative  critics 
the  House  resented  in  pretty  much  the  same  way  as 
his  own. 

"  Perhaps  had  Mr.  Parnell  possessed  in  some  de- 
gree the  oratorical  faculty,  the  House  would  have 
treated  him  more  kindly ;  but  he  has  a  harsh,  mo- 
notonous voice  which  at  once  destroys  all  sympathy 
between  him  and  his  hearers,  and  his  manner  is  stiff 
and,  so  to  speak,  wooden.  Since  he  has  been  in  Par- 
liament he  has  never,  so  far  as  I  recollect,  spoken 
upon  any  question  of  general  politics  excepting  flog- 
ging, and  that  he  took  up  more,  perhaps,  for  obstruct- 
ive purposes  than  on  conscientious  grounds. 

"I  have  spoken  of  Mr.  Parnell's  personal  appear- 
ance. He  is  a  standing  wonder  even  to  his  friends. 
Calm,  cool,  bloodless,  he  is  a  man  whom  nothing  can 
move.  O'Connor  Power  grows  savage  under  the  exas- 
perating treatment  of  the  House  and  O'Donnell  hisses 
his  words  through  his  teeth  with  ill-disguised  resent- 
ment, but  Parnell  remains  invariably  imperturbable. 
A  contest  between  him  and  the  House  is  a  comedy  in 
itself.  '  Mr.  Speaker,'  says  Mr.  Parnell,  rising  to  his 
feet,  amid  overpowering  cries  of '  'Vide !  'vide !'  Then 
comes  a  lull,  in  which  Mr.  Parnell  edges  in  the  words, 
*  Mr.  Speaker,  sir.'  Here  there  is  a  renewed  chorus 
of  voices,  on  the  subsiding  of  which  Mr.  Paojell  ut- 


356     THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP. 

ters  the  words  *  I  rise,'  which  are  followed  by  another 
outburst.  In  this  way  he  contrives,  bit  by  bit,  to  pro- 
ceed with  his  speech,  the  House  unconsciously  serv- 
ing his  purpose  by  forcing  him  to  pause  at  every  word. 
Though  a  man  of  this  resolute  and  unbending  stamp, 
he  has  in  personal  intercourse  the  mildest  and  most 
gentle  manner  conceivable.  He  is  almost  womanly, 
and  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson  has  long  since  noted  that  he 
is  an  inveterate  water-drinker. 

"  There  is  a  belief  abroad  that  Parnell  is  a  wealthy 
man.  This  is  a  mistake.  His  property  does  not  bring 
him  in  more  than  fifteen  hundred  pounds  a  year,  and, 
true  to  the  principles  he  has  recently  been  preaching 
up  and  down  Ireland,  he  has  within  the  past  few 
weeks  reduced  his  own  rents  some  twenty  per  cent. 

**  It  is  a  question  of  some  importance  how  a  man 
of  this  stamp  stands  in  popular  estimation.  From  in- 
quiries I  have  made,  I  am  convinced  that  Mr.  Parnell 
is  at  present  the  most  popular  man  in  Ireland.  He  is 
almost  worshipped  by  the  masses." 

The  third  of  those  popularly  recognized  as  the 
leaders  of  the  Land  League  is  John  Dillon.  In 
1866,  John  Bright — whose  repeated  expressions  of 
sympathy  with  Ireland  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of 
Commons  had  endeared  him  to  a  people  who  should 
have  learned  from  cruel  disappointments  that  the 
opinions  of  a  man  out  of  office  may  be  very  different 
from  the  opinions  of  the  same  man  in  office — was 
invited  to  a  public  banquet  in  Dublin.  Twenty- two 
members  of  the   House  of  Commons   from   Ireland 


MEDAL   AWARDED   COMMODORE  CHARLES   STEWART,    U.  S. 


THE   GATHERERS  OF   THE   CROP.  359 

had  signed  the  invitation.  In  his  speech  at  the  ban- 
quet John  Bright  said :  "  I  speak  with  grief  when  I 
say  that  one  of  our  friends  who  signed  that  invi- 
tation is  no  longer  with  us.  I  had  not  the  pleasure 
of  a  long  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Dillon,  but  I  shall 
take  this  opportunity  of  saying  that  during  the  last 
session  of  Parliament  I  formed  a  very  high  opinion 
of  his  character.  There  was  that  in  his  eye  and  in 
the  tone  of  his  voice — in  his  manner  altogether — 
which  marked  him  for  an  honorable  and  a  just 
man.  ...  I  believe,  amongst  all  her  worthy  sons, 
Ireland  has  had  no  worthier  and  nobler  son  than 
John  Blake  Dillon." 

The  man  thus  justly  characterized  was  adjudged 
by  the  English  government  fit  only  to  be  hung  or 
banished,  for  John  Blake  Dillon  was  one  of  the 
"  Young  Ireland  "  party  of  '48,  and  when  its  aspira- 
tions had  grown  too  bold  for  the  English  govern- 
ment it  sought  to  wreak  the  same  vengeance  on  the 
leaders  which  had  been  inflicted  on  all  their  pred- 
ecessors in  that  cause. 

John  Blake  Dillon  escaped  to  this  country,  and 
was  for  a  time  the  law-partner  of  Richard  O'Gor- 
man,  also  a  rebel  and  recently  elected  judge  of  the 
superior  court  in  New  York.  Mr.  Dillon  returned 
to  Ireland,  and  was  elected  to  Parliament  by  the 
same  constituency  which  his  son  now  represents. 

Sir  Charles  Gavan  Duffy,  who  had  the  best  means 
of  knowing  him  intimately,  as  he  furnished  much  of 
the  brains  of  The  Nation^  of  which  Sir  Charles  was 


360  THE   GATHERERS   OF  THE   CROP. 

editor,  says- of  him:  "He  was  tall  and  strikingly 
handsome,  with  eyes  like  a  thoughtful  woman's,  and 
the  clear  olive  complexion  and  stately  bearing  of  a 
Spanish  noble.  His  generous  nature  made  him  more 
of  a  philanthropist  than  a  politician.  .  .  .  Codes,  ten- 
ures and  social  theories  were  his  familiar  reading. 
.  .  .  He  followed  in  the  track  of  Bentham  and  De 
Tocqueville,  and  recognized  a  regulated  democracy 
as  the  rightful  ruler  of  the  world;  and  he  saw  with 
burning  impatience  the  wrongs  inflicted  on  the  in- 
dustrious poor  by  an  aristocracy  practically  irre- 
sponsible. .  .  .  He  was  grave  with  the  sweet  gravity 
which  comes  from  habitual  thought.  .  .  .  Thackeray 
assured  me  in  later  years  that  among  the  half-dozen 
men  in  the  United  States  whom  he  loved  to  re- 
member the  modesty  and  wholesome  sweetness  of 
Dillon,  then  a  political  refugee,  gave  him  a  foremost 
place.  .  .  .  Dillon  was  a  man  of  remarkable  talents 
carefully  cultivated,  of  lofty  purpose  sustained  by 
steady  courage,  and  of  as  pure  and  generous  a  nature 
as  ever  was  given  to  man."  While  a  member  of 
Parliament  he  was  conspicuous  for  the  zeal  with 
which  he  sought  to  secure  the  attention  of  that 
body  to  the  crying  evils  of  Ireland,  and  his  know- 
ledge of  economic  matters,  especially  in  relation  to 
land  tenure,  was  frequently  exhibited.  It  was  on 
his  motion  that  many  of  the  "  inquiries  "  were  made 
which  resulted  in  laying  before  both  countries  facts 
which  hastened  the  day  of  land  reform.  He  died 
in   1867. 


THE   GATHERERS   OF  THE   CROP.  36 1 

John  Dillon,  his  son,  studied  in  the  Catholic  Uni- 
versity of  Dublin,  and  is  a  lawyer;  his  brother  Wil- 
liam, who  has  also  been  active  in  the  land  move- 
ment, is  a  physician.  The  sons  inherit  their  father's 
ability  with  his  opinions ;  John  resembles  him  some- 
what in  personal  appearance.  Of  delicate  health,  he 
has  had  to  struggle  bravely  to  maintain  vigor  enough 
for  the  exhausting  functions  of  a  public  orator  to 
whom  neither  night  nor  day  can  bring  assurance  of 
repose.  He  speaks  slowly,  carefully  choosing  his 
words,  and  does  not  at  first  make  a  deep  impression 
on  those  who  see  and  hear  him.  But  in  a  few  min- 
utes the  strength  and  tenacity  of  his  thought  be- 
comes apparent.  He  reveals  the  mind  that  has 
been  studying  its  subject  to  the  ultimate  conclu- 
sions ;  he  does  not  tarry  midway  nor  trifle  with  the 
incidental  to  the  neglect  of  the  essential.  He  speaks 
with  clearness,  force  and  determination.  He  does 
not  temporize  or  compromise  in  the  course  of  an 
address,  and  never  permits  the  logical  end  to  get 
out  of  view.  In  private  life  he  is  a  charming  con- 
versationalist, never  garrulous,  but  so  well  equipped 
with  ideas  that  his  conversation  is  at  once  interest- 
ing, informing  and  convincing  without  being  in  the 
least  strenuous  or  persistent. 

Such  are  the  men  who  are  the  recognized  leaders 
of  the  land  agitation  in  Ireland.  Neither  in  their 
antecedents,  in  their  associations,  in  their  personal 
character  nor  in  their  ambition  do  they  suggest  the 
"ignorant  ruffian." 


CHAPTER    XI. 

A   PEACEFUL  AND    CONSTITUTIONAL  MOVE- 
MENT. 

THE  Irish  National  Land  League  was  founded 
October  21,  1879,  i^  ^^e  Imperial  hotel,  Lower 
Sackville  street,  Dublin.  The  parliamentary  Home- 
Rule  party  had  accepted  the  proposition  sent  from 
America  by  the  Irish  nationalists,  and  upon  that  as 
a  platform  all  divisions  of  Irishmen  who  wish  for  the 
good  of  their  country  united.  The  following  is  the 
official  record  of  the  first  meeting : 

"The  Rev.  Father  Behan,  C.  C,  proposed,  and 
Mr.  Wm.  Dillon,  B.  L.,  seconded,  *  That  an  associa- 
tion be  hereby  formed,  to  be  named  "  The  Irish  Na- 
tional Land  League."  ' 

"Proposed  by  Mr.  W.  Kelly,  seconded  by  Mr. 
Thomas  Roe  :  *  That  the  objects  of  the  League  are, 
first,  to  bring  about  a  reduction  of  rack-rents  ;  second, 
to  facilitate  the  obtaining  of  the  ownership  of  the  soil 
by  the  occupant.' 

"  Proposed  by  Mr.  Parnell,  M.  P.,  seconded  by  the 
Rev.  Father  Sheehy,  C.  C. :  *  That  the  objects  of  the 
League  can  be  best  attained  by  promoting  organiza- 
tion among  the  tenant-farmers,  by  defending  those 

U2 


A   PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT.  363 

who  may  be  threatened  with  eviction  for  refusing  to 
pay  unjust  rents,  by  facilitating  the  working  of  the 
Bright  clauses  of-  the  Land  Act  during  the  winter, 
and  by  obtaining  such  reform  in  the  laws  relating  to 
land  as  will  enable  every  tenant  to  become  the  owner 
of  his  holding  by  paying  a  fair  rent  for  a  limited  num- 
ber of  years.' 

"  Proposed  by  Mr.  John  Sweetman,  seconded  by 
Mr.  T.  D.  Sullivan :  *  That  Mr.  Charles  S.  Parnell, 
M.  P.,  be  elected  president  of  this  League.* 

"  Proposed  by  Mr.  George  Delany,  seconded  by 
Mr.  W.  H.  Cobbe,  Portarlington  :  'That  Mr.  A.  J. 
Kettle,  Mr.  Michael  Davitt  and  Mr.  Thomas  Brehnan 
be  appointed  honorary  secretaries  of  the  League.' 

"  Proposed  by  Mr,  Patrick  Cummins,  P.  L.  G.,  sec- 
onded by  Mr.  Laurence  McCourt,  P.  L.  G. :  *  That 
Mr.  J.  G.  Biggar,  M.  P.,  Mr.  W.  H.  O'Sullivan,  M.  P., 
and  Mr.  Patrick  Egan,  be  appointed  treasurers.' 

"  On  the  motion  of  the  Rev.  Father  Sheehy,  sec- 
onded by  Mr.  Michael  Davitt,  it  was  resolved  '  That 
the  president  of  this  League,  Mr.  Parnell,  be  request- 
ed to  proceed  to  America  for  the  purpose  of  obtain- 
ing assistance  from  our  exiled  countrymen,  and  other 
sympathizers,  for  the  objects  for  which  this  appeal  is 
issued.* 

"  Proposed  by  Mr.  Thomas  Ryan,  seconded  by 
Mr.  J.  F.  Graham :  *  That  none  of  the  funds  of  this 
League  shall  be  used  for  the  purchase  of  any  land- 
lord's interests  in  the  land,  or  for  furthering  the  in- 
terests of  any  parliamentary  candidate.* 


364  A    PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT. 

"  Committee. — Charles  Stewart  Parnell,  M.  P.,  Pres- 
ident, Avondale,  Rathdrum ;  P.  O'Gorman,  M.  P., 
Waterford ;  John  Ferguson,  Glasgow;  W.  Quirke, 
P.  P.,  dean  of  Cashel ;  A.  Cummins,  LL.D.,  Liver- 
pool; M.  Harris,  Ballinasloe;  U.  J.  Canon  Bourke, 
P.  P.,  Claremorris ;  J.  O'C.  Power,  M.  P.,  London  ; 
Rev.  J.  Behan,  Dublin ;  Richard  Lalor,  Mountrath ; 
J.  L.  Finegan,  M.  P.,  London ;  Rev.  R.  Sheehy,  Kil- 
mallock ;  J.  J,  Louden,  B.  L.,  Westport ;  O'G.  Mahon, 
M.  P.,  London;  John  Dillon,  Dubhn;  W.  Joyce,  P.  P., 
Louisburgh,  Mayo;  N.  Ennis,  M.  P.,  Claremount, 
Meath;  T.  Roe,  Dundalk  Democrat ;  J.  R.  McClos- 
key,  M.  D.,  Derry;  Geo.  Delany,  Dublin;  T.  D. 
Sullivan,  Nation,  Dublin;  J.  Byrne,  Wallstown  Cas- 
tle, Cork;  J.  E.  Kenny,  Dublin;  M.  Marum,  J.  P.. 
Ballyragget ;  P.  F.  Johnston,  Kanturk  ;  Rev.  M.  Tor- 
mey,  Painstown,  Beauparc ;  T.  Canon  Doyle,  P.  P., 
Ramsgrange ;  P.  J.  Moran,  Finea,  Granard ;  O.  J. 
Carraher,  Cardestown,  Louth ;  J.  White,  P.  P.,  Mill- 
town-Malbay  ;  P.  Cummins,  P.  L.  G.,  Rathmins ;  J. 
Daly,  P.  L.  G.,  Castlebar;  Rev.  P.  M.  Furlong,  New 
Ross;  Thos.  Ryan,  Dublin;  James  Rourke,  Dub- 
lin; R.  Kelly,  Tiiam  Herald;  Wm.  Dillon,  Dublin; 
I.J.  Kennedy,  T.  C,  Clonliffe  Terrace,  Dublin;  M. 
O'Flaherty,  Dunoman  Castle,  Croom ;  John  Sweet- 
man,  Kells;  M.  F.  Madden,  Clonmel;  J.  C.  Howe,  Lon- 
don ;  T.  Lynch,  P.  P.,  Painstown,  Beauparc ;  J.  F. 
Grehan,  P.  L.  G.,  Cabinteely,  Dublin ;  D.  Brennan, 
P.  P.,  Kilmacow,  Kilkenny ;  W.  Kelly,  Donabate, 
Dublin;    C.   Reilly,  Artane,   Dublin;    L.   McCourt, 


A  PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT.  365 

P.  L.  G.,  Dublin;  S.  O'Mara,  Limerick;  Thos.  Gre- 
han,  Loughlinstown,  Dublin;  Rev.  M.  K.  Dunne, 
Enniscorthy;  M.  J.  Kenny,  P.P.,  Scariff;  R.  H. 
Medge,  Athlumney  House,  Navan ;  M.  A.  Conway, 
P.  P.,  Skreen,  Sligo. 

"  Treasurers.— \W,  H.  O'Sullivan,  M.  P.,  Kilmallock; 
J.  G.  Biggar,  M.  P.,  Belfast;  Patrick  Egan,  Dublin. 

'*  Honorary  Secretanes. — A.  J.  Kettle,  P.  L.  G ,  Ar- 
tane,  Dublin ;  Michael  Davitt,  Dublin ;  Thomas 
Brennan,  Dublin. 

"  Committee  Rooms,  62  Middle  Abbey  Street,  Dublin." 

This  record  is  presented  in  full  for  two  reasons : 
to  answer  the  charge  that  the  conservative  element 
in  Ireland — the  Catholic  clergy — did  not  sympathize 
with  the  objects  or  approve  of  the  methods  of  the 
Land  League,  and  to  establish  the  fundamental  cha- 
racter of  the  League  as  it  was  defined  in  its  official 
organization.  The  objects  for  which  the  League  was 
organized  were  kept  constantly  in  view  from  its  in- 
ception until  its  attempted  suppression  by  the  Eng- 
lish government.  These  objects  were  strictly  moral, 
humane  and  constitutional,  and  the  methods  em- 
ployed to  accomplish  them  were  peaceful  and  legal. 
The  League  was  in  active  existence  for  two  years 
when  the  English  government  suppressed  it.  It  ac- 
complished these,  at  least,  among  its  objects :      , 

1.  A  reduction  of  excessive  rents. 

2.  The  protection  of  tenants  evicted  for  not  pay- 
ing excessive  rents. 

23 


366  A  PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT. 

3.  It  compelled  the  English  government  to  pass  a 
bill  taking  away  from  the  Irish  landlord  for  fifteen 
years  the  power  arbitrarily  to  raise  rents,  or  to  evict 
when  rents  are  paid  according  to  the  terms  of  the 
lease. 

It  accomplished  two  objects  not  originally  con- 
templated :  it  saved  from  death  by  famine  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  the  Irish  people  during  the  winter 
and  spring  following  its  organization,  and  it  blended 
all  classes  of  the  people  of  Ireland  into  a  compact 
and  homogeneous  mass  resolved  to  win  by  constitu- 
tional means  the  right  of  Ireland  to  make  her  own 
domestic  laws  on  her  own  soil. 

So  much  has  been  written  on  this  side  the  water 
about  the  hostility  of  the  Catholic  clergy,  as  well  as 
of  the  ministers  of  Protestant  denominations  in  Ire- 
land, to  the  Land  League,  that  a  word  may  be  said 
upon  this  subject.  The  complaint  is  made,  on  the 
one  hand,  against  ecclesiastics  entering  into  Irish 
politics  at  all,  and,  on  the  other,  the  most  has  been 
made  by  the  English  government  of  whatever  hos- 
tility it  could  arouse  among  the  religious  elements 
against  any  popular  movement  with  the  ultimate 
object  of  compelling  the  foreign  government  in  Ire- 
land to  be  more  just  to  the  people.  Americans  can- 
not understand  why  "  the  priest  should  be  in  politics  " 
in  Ireland  any  more  than  in  this  country,  in  whose 
party  contests  he  never  participates.  It  is  undoubt- 
edly true  that  in  Ireland,  as  in  the  United  States,  the 
clergyman  would  prefer  to  escape  the  embarrassment 


A   PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT.  369 

inseparable  from  such  contests ;  but  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  it  has  always  been  the  policy  of  the 
English  government  in  Ireland  to  foment  religious 
dissensions  there  as  a  powerful  means  of  perpet- 
uating its  own  domination.  If  the  Catholics  could 
be  made  odious  and  detestable  to  the  Protestants, 
and  if  the  Protestants  could  be  made  vicious  and 
intolerant  toward  the  Catholics,  violent  collisions,, 
breaking  the  peace  of  the  country,  would  inevitably 
ensue — as,  indeed,  they  have  ensued,  to  the  discredit 
of  all  responsible  for  them.  These  collisions,  endan- 
gering life  and  property,  justified  the  foreign  govern- 
ment inciting  them  in  claiming  that  the  Irish  peo- 
ple are  incapable  of  governing  themselves,  and  must 
have  strong  government  from  abroad  to  make  them 
respect  the  laws  of  the  country.  This  has  been  a 
distinct  feature  of  English  government  in  Ireland 
since  the  Reformation. 

That  it  is  wholly  unwarranted  by  the  facts  of  Irish 
history  is  indisputable.  The  first  seed  of  these  dis- 
sensions was  sowed  by  the  English  government  in 
the  laws  imposing  dreadful  penalties  upon  the  Ro- 
man Catholics,  who,  as  late  as  1800,  comprised  seven- 
tenths  of  the  population.  The  object  of  the  penal 
laws,  as  already  fully  stated,  was  not  to  save  the 
.  souls  of  the  Irish  people,  but  to  get  their  lands, 
ruin  their  industries  and  reduce  the  country  into  a 
vast  farm  whose  soil  and  products  should  be  owned 
m  England,  and  whose  tenants  should  be  patrons  of 
the  English  manufacturer.    That  plan  succeeded,  and 


370  A   PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT. 

to  insure  the  permanence  of  its  success  the  schools 
of  the  Catholics  were  destroyed  and  they  were  for- 
bidden to  educate  their  children  at  home  or  to  send 
them  abroad  for  education.  The  only  schools  which 
existed  in  Ireland  from  the  Reformation  until  a  few 
years  ago  were  schools  in  which  the  Creed  of  the 
Church  of  England  was  taught,  and  which  all  who 
attended  them  had  to  accept ;  and,  as  the  seven- 
tenths  of  the  people  could  not  in  conscience  send 
their  children  to  them,  they  had  to  go  without  ed- 
ucation. These  schools  were  conducted  in  some 
cases  by  sincere  and  benevolent  persons  who  held 
the  doctrines  to  be  essential  to  the  attainment  of 
salvation ;  in  others  by  brutal  and  hypocritical  dem- 
agogues who  were  especially  obnoxious  to  the  mass 
of  the  people. 

The  system  of  tithes  was  also  calculated  to  excite 
the  deepest  antipathy  among  the  majority  of  the 
people.  Every  Irishman,  whatever  his  real  religious 
opinions,  was  required  to  contribute  toward  the  sup- 
port of  the  foreign  Church,  whose  ministers  often 
had  no  congregations,  but  were  in  receipt  of  large 
incomes ;  and  it  was  lawful  to  seize  and  to  sell  the 
property  of  the  Catholic,  the  Methodist,  the  Presby- 
terian or  the  Baptist  to  pay  the  tithes  of  the  minister 
appointed  by  the  state — one  whose  theology  and  per- 
son were  alike  offensive  and  detested.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  there  should  have  been  ill-will  on  the 
part  of  those  who  were  its  victims  toward  those  who 
profited  by  this  injustice?     Yet  it  was  only  ten  years 


A   PEACEFUL  MOVEMENT.  37 1 

ago  that  the  Irish  people  were  relieved  of  the  bur- 
den of  maintaining  this  alien  Church  and  each  de- 
nomination left  free  to  support  tlie  clergy  it  preferred. 
If  there  have  been  religious  dissensions  in  Ireland, 
let  the  blame  rest  where  it  belongs. 

The  special  penalties  of  the  laws  being  laid  on  the 
Catholics,  they  became  poor,  ignorant,  timid ;  and 
occasionally  they  arose  in  madness  and  by  sudden 
and  frenzied  efforts — which  were  always  crushed 
with  the  utmost  cruelty — endeavored  to  throw  off 
the  yoke  which  held  their  necks  to  the  ground. 
Sometimes  the  Protestants,  stung  to  fury  by  the  in- 
justice constantly  visited  upon  their  country,  organ- 
ized secret  revolution,  arose,  were  put  down,  and  the 
leaders  who  escaped  the  bayonet  or  the  ball  went 
to  the  scaffold.  Robert  Emmet's  insurrection  was  a 
Protestant  movement ;  Wolfe  Tone's  conspiracy  was 
a  Protestant  movement ;  the  threatened  revolution  of 
1782,  which  won  the  independence  of  the  Irish  Par- 
liament— only  to  lose  it  altogether  eighteen  years 
later — was  a  Protestant  movement ;  but  in  all  these 
the  Catholics  cordially  united  with  the  Protestants 
and  assisted  them  so  far  as  their  limited  means  al- 
lowed. Wolfe  Tone  declared  that  it  was  only  the 
Catholics  who  were  faithful  to  him  to  the  end.  It 
%vas  inevitable  that  in  the  movement  for  parliament- 
ary independence  a  hundred  years  ago  the  leaders 
should  be  exclusively  Protestant,  because  during  a 
long  preceding  period  the  English  government  had 
shut  out  the  Catholics  from  the  right  to  be  members 


372  A  PEACEFUL  MOVEMENT. 

or  to  vote  for  members.  But  the  Catholics  sub- 
scribed cordially  to  the  volunteer  fund,  by  which, 
no  less  than  by  the  eloquence  of  Grattan,  the  vic- 
tory was  won.^ 

The  instinct  of  the  patriotic  people  of  Ireland  of 
all  creeds  has  been  precisely  what  the  instincts  of  all 
human  beings  are  who  have  a  common  political  ob- 
ject to  accomplish — to  unite  for  the  accomplishment 
of  that  object.  The  politicians  who  have  conducted 
the  government  of  Ireland  for  the  English  man- 
ufacturer understand  this,  and  they  have  always 
strenuously  sought  to  arouse  sectarian  animosity 
and  to  perpetuate  the  miserable  spirit  of  bigotry. 
For  instance,  during  the  time  that  Cornwallis  and 
Castlereagh  were  endeavoring  to  abolish  the  Irish 
Parliament,  they  told  the  Protestants  that  if  the  act 
of  legislative  union  did  not  pass  the  Catholics  would 
obtain  from  the  Irish  Parliament  the  right  to  vote 
and  to  be  members,  and  that  then  the  Protestants 
would  be  persecuted  and  driven  out  of  the  country  ; 
while,  at  the  same  time,  they  insidiously  circulated 
the  assurance  among  the  Catholics  that  if  they  would 
favor  the  act  of  union  they  would  be  granted  the 
political  and  civil  rights  enjoyed  then  only  by  the 
Protestants,  who,  as  long  as  they  controlled  the  Irish 
Parliament,  would  continue  to  exclude  them  from  par- 
ticipation in  the  government  of  their  country.  Doubt- 
less many  of  the  credulous  on  both  sides  believed 
these  libels — gross  libels,  for  the  people  were  rapidly 
drawing  together  for  the  common  good.   Again,  when 


A  PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT.  373 

O'Connell,  twenty  years  later,  was  leading  the  agita- 
tion for  Catholic  emancipation,  the  Protestants  were 
led  to  believe  that  if  the  agitation  succeeded  the  as- 
cendency which  they  had  so  long  enjoyed  would  be 
destroyed,  and  that,  with  their  new  privileges,  the 
Catholics  would  become  so  insolent  that  the  lives 
and  property  of  the  Protestants  would  be  endangered. 
Many  even  of  the  intelligent  among  them  believed 
this  calumny  and  opposed  Catholic  emancipation, 
thereby  arousing  the  suspicion  and  dislike  of  the 
Catholics,  who  had  worked  so  heartily  with  them  to 
obtain  parliamentary  independence.  The  same  argu- 
ments were  employed  against  the  proposition  to 
aboHsh  the  State-Church  and  leave  the  people  free 
to  pay  church  assessments  according  to  conscience  ; 
the  ten  years  that  have  passed  since  that  event  have 
proved  that  the  assumption  was  false. 

The  Orange  society  was  established  in  Ireland — 
doubtless  at  English  instigation — for  the  purpose  of 
oppressing  Catholics  and  dissenters  and  of  perpetuat- 
ing foreign  government  in  the  country;  yet  so  steady 
was  the  inclination  of  all  classes  of  the  people  to 
unite  on  a  common  political  platform  for  the  good 
of  their  country  that  the  idea  of  running  Daniel 
O'Connell  for  Parliament,  and  thereby  forcing  the 
English  government  into  an  encounter  directly  with 
the  then  almost  solid  and  almost  revolutionary  body 
of  the  people,  originated  with  a  famous  Orangeman, 
Sir  David  Roos,  the  high  sheriff  of  Dublin.  The 
petty  conflicts  which  have  occurred  at  various  times 


374  A    PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT, 

since  between  mobs  of  different  creeds  have  always 
been  exaggerated  for  obvious  effect,  and,  if  the  truth 
could  be  gotten  at,  were  probably  instigated  by  Eng- 
lish agents  for  the  ultimate  benefit  of  English  tax- 
payers ;  for  Ireland  pays  much  more  than  her  right- 
ful proportion  of  the  taxes  of  the  empire. 

The  Land  League  has  been  from  the  beginning 
formidable  to  the  English  government,  because  from 
the  beginning  all  classes  of  the  people,  clergy  and 
laity,  have  united  on  its  platform.  The  "  Young  Ire- 
land "  party  of  1848  was  the  first  national  effort  from 
which  sectarianism  was  excluded,  and  of  which  the 
leaders  were  both  Catholic  and  Protestant ;  it  was  the 
noble  songs  of  one  of  these — Thomas  Davis,  a  Prot- 
estant— that  sank  deeply  into  the  hearts  of  the  Catholic 
people  and  inspired  them  with  new  determination  to 
drive  religious  dissensions  out  of  Ireland  and  despoil 
the  English  government  of  its  sectarian  quiver.  The 
two  peers  of  Davis,  John  Blake  Dillon  and  Charles 
Gavan  Duffy,  were  Catholics,  and  their  superb  prose 
supplemented  the  powerful  verse  of  Davis.  The  aboli- 
tion of  the  State-Church  and  the  placing  of  the  clergy 
of  all  denominations  on  the  same  footing,  so  far,  at 
least,  as  support  was  concerned,  removed  the  im- 
passable barrier  which  had  previously  kept  them 
apart ;  and  when  the  Catholic  Davitt  and  the  Prot- 
estant Parnell  united  in  the  organization  of  the  Land 
League,  all  classes  of  the  people  entered  into  the 
ranks,  and  the  most  truly  national  movement  which 
Ireland   has   seen   in  recent  times  was  under  way. 


A   PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT.  375 

Clergymen  of  all  creeds  spoke  on  the  same  platform 
in  advocacy  of  its  objects  and  in  approbation  of  its 
peaceful  and  legal  methods,  and  some  of  the  im- 
mediate results  were  that  overwhelmingly  Catholic 
parliamentary  constituencies  sent  Protestant  repre- 
sentatives to  Westminster,  while  such  eminent  mem- 
bers of  the  Roman  Catholic  hierarchy  as  the  vener- 
able and  lately  deceased  patriot  Archbishop  MacHale 
of  Tuam  and  Archbishop  Croke  of  Cashel  wrote  and 
published  strong  letters  of  encouragement  and  en- 
dorsement of  the  League.  Before  it  was  in  exist- 
ence a  year  a  large  majority  of  the  clergy  had  be- 
come silent  sympathizers  or  open  advocates  ;  few  held 
aloof  The  archbishop  of  Dublin  even  assailed  it ;  he 
had  certainly  a  right  to  his  opinion — the  same  right 
as  any  other  ecclesiastic  or  any  other  man.  But  while 
the  English  agents  of  the  American  press  in  London 
and  Dublin  were  scrupulously  careful  to  send  over 
here,  for  the  purpose  of  influencing  American  senti- 
ment, and  especially  Irish  feeling,  in  this  country,  every 
word  uttered  by  an  individual  ecclesiastic  against  the 
League,  equal  diligence  was  exercised  in  suppressing 
the  constant  utterances  of  other  ecclesiastics  in  its 
support.  The  truth  is  that  all  elements  of  the  pop- 
ulation of  Ireland  have  been  practically  a  unit  for  the 
objects  of  the  League.  The  extreme  nationalists  sup- 
ported it  as  a  step  in  the  right  direction,  their  judg- 
ment being  expressed  in  the  letter  of  Mr.  John  De- 
voy;  the  extreme  conservatives  supported  it  in  the 
persons  of  so  many  of  the  clergy ;  and  the  great  body 


37^  A    PEACEFUL    MOVEMENT, 

of  the  people  supported  it  as  a  movement  whose  im- 
mediate purpose  was  moral,  urgent  and  humane.  The 
League  was  soon  in  operation  throughout  the  coun- 
try. Branches  were  everywhere  organized ;  in  a  short 
•time  hundreds  of  thousands  were  enrolled.  A  small 
weekly  fee  was  paid  by  each,  and  this  created  a  fund 
a  fund  for  the  support  of  tenants  who  might  be  evicted 
for  non-payment  of  rent,  or  whom  the  landlord  cast 
into  the  highways  for  no  cause  whatever. 

The  landlords  found  themselves  in  an  entirely  new 
position.  Previously  they  had  raised  rents  whenevCi. 
they  pleased,  and  had  expelled  rent-paying  tenants 
whenever  they  pleased  ;  now  they  had  to  think  before 
doing  either.  If  they  raised  the  rent  and  the  tenant 
could  not  pay,  they  thrust  him  out  without  any  com- 
pensation for  the  improvements  he  had  made;  but 
they  were  surprised  to  find  that  their  victim  was 
promptly  provided  with  shelter  and  necessaries  for 
himself  and  his  family,  and  they  were  still  more  sur- 
prised at  the  second  consequence  of  the  eviction : 
they  could  not  rent  the  farm  to  a  new  tenant.  The 
word  had  gone  to  the  three  hundred  thousand,  "  Rent 
no  farm  from  which  a  tenant  who  belongs  to  the 
League  has  been  evicted."  Formerly,  so  great  was 
the  competition  for  small  farms  that  as  soon  as  it 
was  known  that  one  was  in  the  market  enough  ap- 
plicants appeared  to  keep  rent  up  to  the  highest  com- 
petitive figure.  The  consequence  of  eviction,  after 
the  Land  League  was  organized,  was  not  only  to 
gradually' induce  a  lowering  of  rents,  but  to  keep 


A  PEACEFUL  MOVEMENT.  3/9 

idle  the  property  of  those  landlords  who  evicted  for 
failure  to  pay  rack-rents.  The  League  was  the  first 
antagonist  the  Irish  landlord  was  compelled  to  re- 
spect. 

The  entire  body  of  the  people  were  not,  of  course^ 
members  of  the  League,  and  its  word  was  not  at  first 
universally  complied  with.  Then  it  endeavored  to 
bring  to  reflection  those  who  took  the  farms  of  the 
evicts :  it  forbade  its  members  to  have  any  social  or 
business  relations  with  them.  This  method  of  has- 
tening reform  in  land  tenure  proved  highly  effectual. 
When  the  patriots  of  America  were  engaged  in  driv- 
ing the  English  government  out  of  their  country  in 
order  that,  after  their  expulsion,  some  of  the  benefits 
of  the  British  constitution — of  which  so  much  had 
been  heard  and  so  little  seen — might  be  secured, 
there  was  a  class  who  believed  that  the  Revolution 
could  not  succeed,  and  their  cunning  prompted  them 
to  remain  loyalists.  They  were  subjected  to  precisely 
the  treatment  which  the  Land  League  gave  those 
persons  in  Ireland  who  remained  servile  to  the 
landlords.  The  American  patriots  said  in  substance 
to  the  loyalists,  "  So  long  as  you  are  perfectly  neu- 
tral you  shall  not  be  molested ;  the  moment  you 
give  any  countenance  to  the  English  we  shall  treat 
you  as  traitors."  So  the  Land  League  said  to  those 
who  opposed  its  peaceable  campaign,  "  So  long  as 
you  are  perfectly  neutral  you  shall  not  be  molested  ; 
the  moment  you  aid  landlordism  we  shall  treat  you 
as  enemies  of  the  people  and  of  the  country." 


380  A    PEACEFUL    MOVEMENT. 

The  promise  was  fulfilled :  the  man  who  took  a 
farm  from  which  an  evict  had  gone  forth  to  subsist 
upon  public  charity  was  cut  off  from  social  inter- 
course. His  neighbors  would  sell  him  nothing;  they 
would  buy  nothing  from  him  which  they  could  get 
elsewhere  or  could  do  without.  One  now  historic 
case  soon  attracted  the  attention  of  the  entire  coun- 
try— indeed,  of  the  world.  It  was  the  case  that  sent 
a  landlord's  agent  into  the  dictionary— a  place  to 
which  he  was  quite  a  stranger. 

The  approach  of  famine,  with  all  the  horrors  which 
had  followed  in  its  ghastly  train  in  '47  and  the  sub- 
sequent years,  compelled  the  Land  League  to  take 
prompt  measures  to  save  the  lives  of  the  people. 
The  potato  crop  is  an  infallible  guide  to  the  con- 
dition of  the  Irish  peasantry.  In  1876— a  fair  year 
— its  value  was  over  sixty  million  dollars;  in  1877 
its  value  was  twenty-five  million  dollars ;  the  next 
year  it  was  thirty-five  million;  but  in  1879  it  shriv- 
elled to  fifteen  million  dollars.  That  meant  death  to 
a  million  of  the  Irish  tenantry.  Whatever  their  little 
holdings  had  produced  besides  potatoes  had  gone  to 
pay  the  previous  year's  rent.  Now  the  crop  that  they 
depended  on  for  food  was  also  gone.  The  general 
crops  had  been  poor  throughout  the  country,  and 
many  of  the  tenants  had  not  been  able  to  pay  their 
rents  in  full ;  others  were  totally  unable  to  pay  ;  and 
evictions  increased  as  famine  slowly  crept  after  the 
trembling  tenantry.  In  1876  the  evictions  officially 
reported  were  one  thousand  two  hundred  and  sixty- 


A  PEACEFUL  MOVEMENT,  38 1 

nine;  in  1877  there  were  one  thousand  three  hun- 
dred and  twenty-three ;  in  1878  the  number  rose  to 
one  thousand  seven  hundred  and  forty-nine ;  but  the 
figures  in  1879,  thanks  to  the  determined  stand  taken 
by  the  Land  League,  showed  a  diminution :  the  total 
was  one  thousand  three  hundred  and  forty-eight. 
The  Land-League  leaders  saw  that  if  the  people 
who  had  the  means  to  do  so  paid  their  rents  in  the 
autumn  of  1879,  they  would  swell  the  number  of 
the  possible  famine-victims  beyond  the  power  of 
charity  to  save  them  from  starvation;  and,  as  a 
man's  first  duty  is  to  preserve  his  life  and  the  lives 
of  his  family,  the  tenants  were  advised  to  hold  back 
the  rents  if  that  was  the  only  way  by  which  they 
could  escape  starvation  until  spring.  The  Land 
League  never  taught  the  doctrine  of  no  rent;  it 
never  taught  the  doctrine  so  repeatedly  practised 
by  the  English  government — ^that  of  confiscation; 
it  never  taught  the  doctrine  of  the  abolition  of 
private  property.  The  proposition  of  the  Land 
League  was  that  of  John  Bright — that  the  land- 
lords should  be  bought  out  by  the  state,  receiving 
fair  prices  for  their  lands,  and  that  the  state  should 
sell  to  actual  working  tenants  at  fair  prices  and  on 
reasonable  time,  holding  a  first  lien  on  the  lands 
until  the  purchase-money  and  interest  were  paid. 
There  is  nothing  communistic  or  confiscatory  in 
the  entire  history  of  the  League. 

The  advice  to  the  tenants  to  withhold  the  rent  as 
a  means  of  saving  the  lives  of  their  children  and  of 
24 


382  ^   PEA  CEFUL   MO  VEMENT. 

themselves  commends  itself  to  every  just  mind;  but 
the  landlords  were  not  disposed  so  to  look  upon  it, 
and  troops  began  pouring  into  the  country  to  aid  the 
landlords  in  enforcing  rent-collections  and  in  making 
evictions,  although  hundreds  of  the  tenantry  were  al- 
ready In  want.  The  notice  to  quit  was  soon  pre- 
sented at  many  a  cabin-door ;  armed  with  a  revolver 
and  backed  by  soldiery,  the  process-server  forced  his 
way  into  the  bare  and  wretched  cottage  and  thrust 
the  fateful  paper  into  the  thin  fingers  of  its  outraged 
but  helpless  occupant.  In  1846  no  less  than  three 
hundred  thousand  starving  human  beings  were  thus 
expelled  from  their  huts  to  die*:  they  did  die.  Now 
note  the  difference  in  the  results  under  the  manly 
and  stubborn  menace  of  the  Land  League.  In  Oc- 
tober, 1879,  Davitt  said  to  the  tenants,  "If,  to  save 
your  families  from  death,  you  must  keep  back  the 
rent,  keep  it  back ;  you  are  bound  before  God  to 
save  them.  You  must  not  imagine  that  you  will  be 
turned  out  on  the  roadside  to  die,  as  your  fathers 
were  in  '46.  There  is  a  spirit  abroad  in  Ireland  to- 
day that  will  not  stand  that  a  second  time  in  a  cen- 
tury." 

The  words  rang  through  the  humble  cabins  and 
weie  listened  to  in  the  mansions  of  the  landlords. 
The  process-server  was  not  from  that  moment  in  so 
great  demand,  although  the  country  had  been  filled 
with  English  troops  to  force  starvation  and  eviction. 
Davitt's  menace  was  not  misunderstood.  It  did  not 
mean  armed  insurrection :  there  was  not  in  all  Ire- 


A   PEACEFUL   xMOVEMENT.  383 

land  a  thousand  rifles,  probably,  with  which  to  make 
an  attack  on  the  whole  army  of  the  British  empire. 
But  there  are  methods  which,  under  certain  circum- 
stances, are  more  powerful  than  cannon — methods 
absolutely  peaceful ;  and  those  which  the  Land 
League  had  adopted  were  already  in  operation. 
No  man  would  take  a  farm  from  a  landlord  who 
had  evicted  tenants  who  refused  to  pay  rent,  because 
they  needed  the  money  to  save  themselves  from 
starvation,  and  no  man  would  hold  any  social  in- 
tercourse with  those  who  violated  this  rule.  Against 
three  hundred  thousand  evictions  in  the  former  fam- 
ine year,  we  see  thirteen  hundred  and  forty-eight  in 
1879. 

But  it  soon  became  apparent  that  the  people  would 
perish  if  money  were  not  obtained  to  buy  food  for 
those  who  had  neither  money  nor  crop.  Instead  of 
coming  promptly  to  the  relief  of  the  famishing,  the 
government  devoted  its  energies  to  breaking  up  the 
Land  League,  and  in  November,  1879,  Michael 
Davitt  and  two  of  his  associates  were  arrested. 
The  government  failed  to  make  out  a  case  against 
them,  and,  personal  liberty  not  having  yet  been 
entirely  abolished,  they  were  released. 

Meanwhile,  in  accordance  with  instructions  from 
the  Land  League,  Charles  Stewart  Parnell  and  John 
Dillon  sailed  for  the  United  States  to  enlist  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  American  people  and  to  solicit  aid. 
They  arrived  January  2,  1880.  They  travelled 
speedily    over   the    country,    accompanied    by    Mr. 


3S4  A   PEACEFUL  MOVEMENT., 

John  Murdock,  the  Highlander  who  has  made  so 
thorough  a  study  of  peasant  proprietary,  speaking 
in  all  the  large  cities  and  being  received  every- 
where with  emphatic  demonstrations  of  welcome. 
All  classes  of  the  people  united  in  answering  their 
appeals,  and  subscriptions  amounting  to  over  two 
hundred  thousand  dollars  were  placed  in  their 
hands.  On  February  2,  Mr.  Parnell  was  received 
by  Congress  while  in  session,  and  delivered  an  ad- 
mirable address  setting  forth  the  aims  and  hopes  of 
the  League  and  the  miserable  condition  of  the  Irish 
country.  It  was  his  intention  to  form  a  Land  League 
in  the  United  States,  but  before  he  could  do  so  he 
was  summoned  back  to  his  seat  in  Parliament.  He 
sailed  on  February  ii,  1880.  Mr.  Dillon  remained 
in  the  United  States,  continuing  the  work  which  he 
had  been  commissioned  to  do. 

After  his  release  Mr.  Davitt  had  been  sent  to 
France  and  Belgium  to  obtain  assistance  and  come 
thence  to  the  United  States.  After  several  prelim- 
inary meetings  an  American  branch  of  the  Irish 
National  Land  League  was  organized  in  New  York, 
and  branches  were  formed  almost  simultaneously 
throughout  the  country.  The  membership,  includ- 
ing that  of  the  ladies'  leagues  which  were  organized 
for  charitable  work  by  Miss  Fanny  Parnell,  ably  sus- 
tained by  Mrs.  Parnell  and  Miss  Ellen  Ford,  is  over 
three  hundred  thousand.  The  officers  chosen  at  a 
national  convention  held  in  Buffalo  are :  president, 
Patrick    A.    Collins ;    vice-president.    Rev.    Patrick 


A   PEACEFUL   MOVEMENT.  385 

Cronin;  secretary,  Thomas  Flatley;  treasurer,  Rev. 
Lawrence  Walsh.  The  objects  of  the  League  re- 
ceived the  all  but  universal  approbation  of  the  clergy 
of  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  United  States,  and 
the  public  meetings  held  under  the  auspices  of  the 
League  to  raise  money  for  those  in  danger  of  starv- 
ing were  addressed  by  the  most  eminent  of  the  hier- 
archy, while  others  appealed  in  pastoral  letters  di- 
rectly to  their  clergy  and  people,  explaining  clearly 
and  eloquently  the  causes  of  the  famine. 

Said  Bishop  Hennessy  of  Dubuque:  "If  the  gov- 
ernment had  sincere  compassion  on  a  suffering  peo- 
ple and  an  honest  desire  to  save  them  from  the  fate 
which  was  impending,  would  it  in  such  an  emer- 
gency, under  pretext  of  law  or  any  other  pretext, 
become  a  party  to  landlord  rapacity?  Would  it 
send  its  constabulary  and  military  to  distrain  and 
eject,  to  tear  down  cabins  and  throw  shivering  chil- 
dren, their  mothers  and  grandmothers,  out  on  the 
highways  in  the  depth  of  winter?  Would  it  seize 
and  carry  off  by  force  the  crops  and  other  chattels 
to  which,  through  sheer  necessity,  without  a  thought 
of  dishonesty,  the  poor  farmer  clung  that  he  might 
have  wherewith  to  keep  the  hfe  in  his  little  ones? 
Would  it  wrench  the  crust  out  of  the  hand  of  hunger 
that  pampered  tyranny  might  have  the  last  penny  of 
the  rent?  Conduct  such  as  this  betrays  no  pity. 
The  aim  of  the  British  government  is  not  to  remove 
distress  in  Ireland,  but  rather  to  produce,  aggravate 
and   take  advantage   of  it.     To   exterminate   those 


386  J   PEACEFUL  MOVEMENT. 

whom  it  could  not  pervert  was  its  manifest  and 
avowed  policy  on  the  failure  of  the  reformation.  It 
is  still  the  same,  though  not  so  openly.  It  is  easy 
to  see  how  it  is  going  to  work  now.  Famine  will 
take  some ;  its  invariable  attendant,  pestilence,  or 
sickness  of  some  kind,  will  carry  off  still  more ;  and 
emigration  will  follow.  The  three  will  scour  the 
land  and  scourge  it  and  multiply  sheep-walks.  Did 
not  the  government  foresee  this?  Others  did  who 
are  not  quite  so  keen-sighted.  If  not  intended,  why 
not  prevented  ?  One  per  cent,  of  what  it  cost  to  rob 
and  murder  Afghans  and  Zulus  in  unjust  wars,  as 
worthless  as  they  were  wicked  in  the  judgment  even 
of  Englishmen,  soldiers  and  civilians,  would  have 
greatly  improved  Ireland  and  preserved  her  people. 
But  to  do  this  was  not  in  the  programme.  The 
friends  of  Ireland,  the  trusted  leaders  of  her  people, 
will  strive  against  emigration  by  argument  and  prom- 
ises and  personal  influence.  I  fear  they  will  not  suc- 
ceed to  the  extent  of  their  wishes.  Multitudes,  espe- 
cially of  the  young,  the  vigorous,  the  ambitious,  will 
not  be  induced,  cannot  be  persuaded,  to  remain  in  a 
country  where  famine  is  periodical  and  misery  per- 
petual, and  this  not  by  the  accidents  of  fortune,  but 
by  the  design  of  their  rulers." 


LAND- LEAGUERS   TILLING  THE   FARM   OF  AN  IMPRIbO\ED   MEMBER. 


CHAPTER    XII. 

A  LANDLORD'S  AGENT  GOES  LNTO   THE 
DICTIONARY, 

AMR.  BOYCOTT,  who  had  acquired,  without 
getting  it  legitimately,  the  title  of  "  Captain," 
was  agent  for  Lord  Erne,  who  had  a  large  estate  in 
Mayo  upon  which  he  did  not  reside.  Captain  Boy- 
cott was  accustomed  to  rack-rent  the  tenants,  to  in- 
sult, humiliate  and  oppress  them,  and  he  was  despised 
and  feared.  In  addition  to  robbing  them  of  every 
shilling  he  could  extort  as  rent,  he  required  the  ten- 
ants to  work  for  him  at  his  own  terms — a  shilling 
and  sixpence  a  day  for  the  men,  a  shilling  a  day  for 
the  women — and  to  feed  themselves.  By  a  system 
of  petty  rules  he  contrived  to  reduce  even  this  beg- 
garly pittance:  a  man  was  fined,  for  instance,  so 
much  if  he  walked  on  the  grass,  and  so  much  more 
if  he  wheeled  his  barrow  out  of  the  path.  The  cap- 
tain was  a  ruffian  in  his  manners  toward  the  people, 
addressing  them  like  dogs  and  compelling  them  to 
submit  to  galling  personal  affronts  which  poverty  and 
dependence  do  not  render  any  easier  to  human  na- 
ture. He  had  repeatedly  evicted  the  poor  and  re- 
peatedly robbed  those  whom  he  did  not  evict,  and 

389 


390  FROM  AGENCY  TO  DICTIONAR\. 

during  seventeen  years'  administration  of  Lord  Erne's 
estate  had  earned  the  hatred  and  contempt  of  all  who 
had  tenant-relations  with  him.  The  Land  League 
paid  him  some  remarkable  attentions. 

First,  it  commanded  the  tenants  to  refuse  to  pay 
him  rack-rents.  Secondly,  it  required  the  tenants  to 
ask  of  him  for  harvesting  his  crops  the  same  wages  as 
were  paid  for  that  kind  of  labor  by  other  landlords. 
The  League  terms  were  two  shillings  sixpence  for 
the  men,  and  one  shilling  sixpence  for  the  women. 
Amazed  at  their  audacity  and  furious  over  their  im- 
pudence, he  swore  roundly  that  he  would  do  nothing 
of  the  kind.  Thereupon  the  tenants  refused  to  har- 
vest his  crops,  and  departed  in  a  body.  He  proceed- 
ed into  the  adjoining  localities,  expecting  to  get  all 
the  help  he  wanted  at  a  slight  advance  in  wages ;  but 
he  was  mistaken :  neither  man,  woman  nor  child 
would  work  for  him  upon  any  terms.  Incredulous, 
he  drove  miles  and  miles,  and  was  everywhere  met 
with  the  same  laconic  response :  "  We  won't."  Times 
had  indeed  changed  in  Ireland ;  the  people  did  not 
even  take  their  hats  off  to  him — those  who  had  hats 
— and  before  the  Land  League  every  man  in  Ire- 
land had  to  take  his  hat  off  to  the  landlord  and  keep 
it  off  while  the  petty  tyrant  drove  along,  even  if  the 
rain  were  descending.  But  nobody  took  off  a  hat  to 
Captain  Boycott,  and  neither  he  nor  Lord  Erne  had 
money  enough  to  buy  a  day's  labor  in  Mayo  or  be- 
yond its  borders. 

Chagrined  and  beside  himself  with  rage,  he  deter- 


FROM  AGENCY  TO  DICTIONARY.  39 1 

mined  that  his  crops  should  be  harvested  if  he  had 
to  do  the  work  himself.  He  found  that  it  was  a  more 
difficult  task  than  he  had  anticipated — much  more 
difficult  than  playing  slave-driver  to  tenantry.  Then 
he  called  upon  his  wife  and  daughters  and  servants 
to  help  him.  The  delicate  palms  of  the  ladies  were 
soon  blistered,  but  the  crops  were  still  unharvested. 
Surrender  stared  Captain  Boycott  in  the  face,  but  he 
did  not  give  up  like  a  man.  Instead  of  acknowledg- 
ing the  justice  of  the  wages  asked,  he  sent  his  wife 
down  to  the  cabins  to  beg  the  Irish  mothers  to  help 
her  and  her  family  out  of  their  predicament,  and  the 
captain  was  willing  to  pay  the  terms  the  harvesters 
had  asked.     Then  the  crops  were  harvested. 

The  captain  nursed  his  wrath  for  rent-day.  The 
famine  had  been  in  that  part  of  the  country ;  the 
crops  were  poor  for  two  seasons,  and  many  of  the 
people  had  been  compelled  to  go  over  to  England 
during  the  harvests  and  earn  there,  as  laborers,  mon- 
ey enough  to  keep  them  from  starvation  :  they  had 
none  left.  Many  whose  families  had  lived  upon  the 
generosity  of  the  little  shopkeepers  had  not  enough  to 
pay  those  debts  and  the  arrears  of  rent,  and  they  had 
hoped  that,  taking  into  account  the  failure  of  two 
seasons  and  their  industrious  efforts  to  repair  their 
misfortunes,  Captain  Boycott  would  remit  a  portion 
of  the  arrears  and  reduce  the  rents  for  the  next  year. 
He  would  do  neither  one  nor  the  other :  whoever  did 
not  pay  up  in  full  must  leave  the  estate.  In  that  part 
of  Ireland  eviction  means  death,  and  the  rumor  that 


392  FROM  AGENCY  TO  DICTIONARY. 

all  who  could  not  pay  in  full  were  to  be  turned  into 
the  roads  and  ditches  flew  like  the  news  of  an  ap- 
proaching plague. 

It  has  been  one  of  the  privileges  of  the  Irish  land- 
lord to  use  law  in  ways  denied  other  creditors.  A 
shopkeeper  could  not  serve  a  writ  except  upon  the 
head  of  a  family  and  in  person,  but  a  landlord  could 
serve  it  on  a  woman  in  the  house  or  nail  it  on  the 
door  if  the  woman  would  not  let  him  in.  Captain 
Boycott  sent  by  the  hands  of  process-servers  notices 
of  eviction,  and  as  soon  as  one  of  these  approached  a 
cottage  the  woman  of  the  house  sent  one  of  the  chil- 
dren with  a  red  petticoat  to  the  nearest  hill-top,  where 
it  was  waved  to  give  the  other  women  notice  that  the 
obnoxious  person  was  coming.  The  women  of  Mayo 
hurried  to  the  scene,  and  by  gibes,  taunts,  jokes  and 
still  more  offensive  means  generally  drove  the  em- 
issary of  the  law  away  from  the  cottage  before  he 
had  either  seen  its  inmates  or  reached  the  door  with 
his  hammer  and  nails. 

Then  Captain  Boycott  secured  the  services  of  a 
hundred  armed  constables  to  protect  the  process- 
server,  but  no  man  could  be  induced  to  accept  the 
latter  office.  The  women  had  found  out  from  a 
Land-League  lawyer  that  nailing  the  notice  on  the 
door  was  not  statute  law,  but  landlord  law ;  that  the 
notice  must  be  served  inside  the  house.  The  women 
determined  to  save  the  process-servers  possible  in- 
jury, and  sent  the  message  to  the  *' big  house"  that 
they  would  leave  the  doors  open  and  have  plenty  of 


FROM  AGENCY   TO  DICTIONARY.  393 

boiling  water  on  hand  when  the  writs  should  arrive. 
No  man  in  that  part  of  Ireland  was  fond  enough  of 
boiling  water  to  wish  for  it  in  such  copious  quanti- 
ties, and  Captain  Boycott  did  not  even  propose  to 
serve  the  notices  himself,  although  he  had  sworn 
they  should  be  served.  .  He  determined  to  compel 
the  government  of  the  empire  of  Great  Britain  to  use 
its  army  and  navy,  if  necessary,  to  serve  his  eviction 
writs ;  and  then  the  peasantry,  under  the  direction 
of  the  Land  League,  prepared  to  fight  the  army  and 
navy  without  other  weapons  than  those  of  passive 
resistance. 

It  was  ordered  that  the  captain  and  his  family  be 
let  alone.  The  men  who  fed  his  stock  left;  the 
house-servants  left;  no  man,  no  woman,  would  work 
for  him  in  any  capacity ;  the  village  shops  civilly  de- 
clined to  furnish  the  necessaries  which  could  be  no 
longer  prepared  at  the  house.  The  tenantry  would 
not  have  carried  these  measures  to  such  extremes 
had  he  not  deliberately  calumniated  them  in  the 
London  papers,  to  which  he  wrote  the  gross  un- 
truth that  he  was  persecuted  for  being  a  Protestant. 
Neither  he  nor  any  of  his  family  could  buy  at  any 
price  clothing,  food,  or  any  article  for  their  use ;  he 
had  to  feed  and  water  his  own  cattle,  and  his  wife 
and  daughters  were  compelled  to  do  the  domestic 
work.  This  condition  of  things  became  intolerable, 
and  at  last  Captain  Boycott  voluntarily  left  the 
country. 

While  the  passive  siege  was   being   carried   on, 


394  FROM  AGENCY   TO  DICTIONARY. 

James  Redpath  visited  the  parish  priest,  Fathei 
John  O'Malley,  who  had  kept  up  the  courage  of 
the  tenants.  During  a  frugal  dinner  the  American 
paused  and  became  pensive. 

**  What  is  the  matter  ?"  asked  the  priest. 

"  I  am  bothered  about  a  word,"  was  the  reply  of 
the  American,  who  was  preparing  to  send  to  a  jour- 
nal at  home  an  account  of  the  novel  proceedings. 

"'Ostracism,'"  said  Father  O'Malley,  "will  not 
do :  the  people  would  not  understand  that."  After 
a  moment's  reflection  he  added  with  a  smile,  "  How 
would  it  do  to  call  it  'boycotting'?" 

In  that  way  a  landlord's  agent  went  out  of  Ireland 
and  went  into  the  dictionary. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 
DRIVEN  FROM  HOME  BY  FAMINE  AND  LAW, 


NO  comment  on  the  following  figures  can  make 
them  more  eloquent  than   are  their  pathetic 
columns : 

Emigration  from  Ireland  from  1841  to  1879,  inclusive. 


1841 71.392 

1842 89,686 

1843 37.509 

1844 54,289 

1845 •    74.969 

1846 105,955 

1847 215,444 

1848 178,159 

1849 214,425 

1850 209,054 

1851 257,572 

1852 190,322 

1853 I73'H8 

1854 140,555 

1855 91-914 


1856 

1857 
1858 
1859 
i860 


90,781 
95.081 

64,337 
80,599 
84,621 


1861 64,292 

1862 70,1 17 

1863 117,229 

1864 114,169 

1865 101,495 

1866   99,466 

1867 80,624 

1868 61,018 

1869  .........  66,568 

1870 74,855 

1871 71,240 

1872 78,102 

1873 90,149 

1874 73.'84 

1875 51,462 

1876 25,976 

1877 28,831 

1878 24,492 

1879 47,065 


In  the  thirty  years  from   1840  to  1870  three  mil- 

395 


396 


DRIVEN  FROM  HOME. 


lions  of  the  Irish  people  were  driven  from  home  by 
the  effects  of  foreign  misgovernment. 
Well  might  Lady  Wilde  write : 

"  A  million  a  decade !     What  does  it  mean  ? 

A  nation  dying  of  inner  decay ; 
A  churchyard's  silence  where  life  has  been, 

The  base  of  the  pjnramid  crumbling  away ; 
A  drift  of  men  gone  over  the  sea, 
A  drift  of  the  dead  where  men  should  be." 

While  the  Irish  have  thus  been  continually  driven 
from  home,  the  people  of  the  other  portions  of  the 
empire  of  Great  Britain  have  increased  and  multi- 
plied. The  following  table  presents  the  constant 
contrast  of  diminished  population  in  Ireland  and  in- 
creased population  in  England,  Scotland  and  Wales ; 


Year. 

England  and 
Wales. 

Scotland. 

Ireland. 

181I 

1821 

1831 

1841 

1851 

1861 

1871 

10,454,529 
12,172,664 
14,051,986 
16,035,198 
18,054,170 
20,228,497 
22,712,266 

1,881,044 

2,137,325 
2,405,610 
2,652,339 
2,922,362 
3,096,808 
3,360,018 

6,084,996 
6,869,544 
7.828,347 
8,196.597 
6,574,278 

5,798,967 
5,412.377      1 

The  natural  conditions  of  life  are  at  least  equally 
favorable  in  the  three  countries.  Why  should  the 
population  of  two  increase,  and  of  the  third  so  steadily 
diminish? 

A  government  which  produces  such  results  is  on 
them  judged  and  condemned. 

It  is  frequently  asserted  that  the  cause  of  Irish 


25 


DRIVEN  FROM  HOME.  399 

emigration  is  that  the  country  cannot  feed  the  pop- 
ulation. The  truth  is  that  the  food  which  the  soil 
produces  is  exported ;  it  is  the  property  of  the  land- 
lord, to  whose  agents  it  is  consigned,  chiefly  in  Eng- 
lish seaports.  Says  Thorn's  Directory  (standard  Brit- 
ish statistical  publication),  p.  675  :  "The  exportation 
of  the  agricultural  produce  of  the  country  has  al- 
ways been  the  chief  commercial  business  carried 
on  in  Ireland.  During  the  Revolutionary  war  this 
country  furnished  a  large  share  of  the  provisions  for 
the  army  and  navy,  and  it  still  sends  supplies  to  the 
colonial  markets.  But  Great  Britain  is  by  far  the 
best  and  most  extensive  market  for  all  sorts  of  Irish 
produce.  By  much  the  greater  part  of  the  export 
trade  is  carried  on  by  the  cross- Channel  navigation, 
chiefly  to  Liverpool,  Bristol  and  Glasgow,  the  staple 
articles  being  black  cattle,  sheep,  swine,  salted  pro- 
visions, grain,  flour,  butter,  eggs  and  linen. 

That  is,  in  the  briefest  possible  terms,  the  com- 
plete explanation  of  Irish  famine,  Irish  poverty  and 
Irish  emigration.  The  country  produces  enough 
food  to  feed  many  times  its  population — economists 
have  even  said  as  many  as  twenty  times — for  the 
soil  is  incomparably  rich  ;  but  the  food  is  owned, 
not  by  the  people  who  till  the  soil,  but  by  the  land- 
lords who  hold  the  present  title  to  it.  They  ex- 
port the  food ;  the  people  hunger,  die  or  leave  the 
country. 

The  American  will  not  fail  to  notice  that  the  en- 
tire export  trade   consists  of  products  of  the  soil. 


400  DRIVEN  FROM  HOME. 

with  a  single  exception — linen,  the  one  important 
manufacture  of  Ireland,  whose  material  insignificance 
is  shown  in  the  chapter  entitled  "The  Reason  Ire- 
land has  no  Manufactures."  Here  we  behold  the 
success  of  the  policy  of  England  in  Ireland  for  cen- 
turies— to  make  her  a  convenient  market  for  the 
English  manufacturer.  She  has  nothing  to  send 
out  but  the  products  of  her  soil;  every  manufac- 
tured article  she  wants  must  be  bought  in  England. 
The  money  paid  for  the  products  of  the  soil  belongs 
to  landlords,  many  of  whom  reside  abroad,  all  of 
whom  spend  or  invest  it  abroad.  Therefore  there  is 
no  capital  in  Ireland  for  manufactures.  Until  the 
people  who  till  the  soil  own  it  the  money  paid  for 
its  products  will  not  go  back  to  Ireland ;  until  it 
goes  back  there  will  be  no  capital  to  invest  in  man- 
ufactures ;  until  manufactures  exist  the  country  must 
remain  poor,  since  an  entire  people  cannot  profitably 
live  on  a  single  occupation. 

The  remedy,  therefore,  for  Irish  emigration,  Irish 
famine  and  Irish  poverty  is  Peasant  Proprietary — 
the  ultimate  object  of  the  Land-League  agitation. 

The  absurdity  of  saying  that  the  rich  soil  of 
Ireland  is  not  capable  of  supporting  her  people  is 
completely  exposed  in  another  way.  In  Belgium, 
whose  inhabitants  number  5,336,185,  the  population 
to  the  square  mile  is  469 ;  in  Bavaria,  with  a  popula- 
tion of  5,022,390,  it  is  170;  in  Saxony,  with  a  pop- 
ulation of  2,760,586,  it  is  407;  in  Switzerland,  with  a 
population  of  2,669,147,  it  is  179;  in  the  Netherlands, 


DRIVEN  FROM  HOME,  4OI 

with  a  population  of  3,579,529,  it  is  185.  These  are 
all  small  countries,  peaceful,  thrifty,  contented  and 
prosperous.  In  Ireland,  also  a  small  country,  the 
population  to  the  square  mile  is  only  169,  yet  she  is 
neither  peaceful,  contented,  thrifty  nor  prosperous. 

The  population  of  Belgium  has  constantly  increas- 
ed. Emigration  has  never  been  suggested  to  her  peo- 
ple as  a  remedy  for  poverty:  they  are  not  poor.  The 
population  of  Ireland  has  steadily  declined,  yet  em- 
igration has  been  repeatedly  suggested  as  a  remedy 
for  her  poverty.  Belgium,  like  Ireland,  is  an  export- 
ing country.  She  never  has  famine ;  she  is  able  to 
export  both  food  and  manufactures.  What  is  the 
secret  of  her  prosperity?  The  people  who  till  the 
land  own  it.  There  are  in  Belgium  nearly  a  million 
and  a  half  peasant  proprietors.  From  1846  to  1876 
the  number  of  these  increased  twenty-four  per  cent. 
The  money  obtained  for  the  fruits  of  the  soil  goes 
back  to  the  country,  and  is  utilized  there ;  one-fourth 
of  the  people  are  engaged  in  manufacturing.  Al- 
though the  population  to  the  square  mile  is  nearly 
three  times  that  of  Ireland,  immigration  there  has 
actually  exceeded  emigration ! 

In  Saxony,  where  the  population  to  the  square 
mile  is  407,  against  169  in  Ireland,  the  number  of 
inhabitants  has  increased ;  the  country  is  contented, 
thrifty  and  prosperous ;  she  knows  nothing  of  fam- 
ine. The  people  who  till  the  land  own  it.  She  feeds 
them  all,  and  is  able  to  export  food. 

In  the  Netherlands,  where  the  population  to  the 


402  ^^  DRIVEN  FROM  HOME.  , 

square  mile  is  185,  famine  is  unknown;  the  people 
who  till  the  soil  own  it.  It  feeds  them  all,  and  the 
chief  exports  are  butter,  sheep,  corn,  cheese  and  silk. 

In  Bavaria,  where  the  population  to  the  square 
mile  is  179,  against  169  in  Ireland,  peace,  prosperity 
and  contentment  prevail.  The  population  has  in- 
creased ;  famine  is  unknown.  The  people  who  till 
the  soil  own  it.  It  feeds  them  bountifully,  and  there 
is  left  food  to  export. 

In  Switzerland,  where  the  population  to  the  square 
mile  is  175,  to  169  in  Ireland,  the  population  has  in- 
creased. Out  of  a  total  of  more  than  two  millions 
and  a  half,  there  are  only  half  a  million  who  do  not 
own  land.  The  people  are  among  the  most  contented 
in  Europe,  and  the  thriftiest.  Over  a  million  of  the 
citizens  are  supported  by  agriculture;  the  rest  are 
engaged  in  textile  and  mechanical  industries. 

These  are  all  small  countries  like  Ireland,  but  the 
soil  of  none  of  them  is  equal  in  fertility  to  that  of  Ire- 
land. Their  population  to  the  square  mile  is  greater 
than  that  in  Ireland,  yet  we  are  told  that  Ireland  can- 
not feed  her  people,  and  that  emigration  is  the  proper 
remedy. 

Ireland  does  not  feed  her  people,  because  her  soil 
is  owned  by  foreigners,  and  its  products  are  exported 
and  sold  for  their  benefit. 

Each  of  the  continental  countries  compared  with 
her  has  two  institutions  which  insure  their  peace, 
prosperity  and  contentment — home  rule  and  peasant 
proprietar)'. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 
LIBERTY  AND   CRIME   IN  IRELAND. 

PROBABLY  the  average  American  believes  that 
Ireland  is  a  thoroughly  criminal  country.  The 
cable  is  frequently  charged  with  reports  of  alleged 
outrages. 

The  average  Englishman  believes  that  the  only 
way  to  protect  life  and  property  in  Ireland  is  to  sus- 
pend the  British  constitution  in  that  country,  give 
one  Englishman — called  a  chief  secretary — power  to 
suspect  any  number  of  persons  of  a  secret  intention  to 
break  the  law,  on  that  suspicion  hurry  them  into  pris- 
on, and  keep  them  there  as  long  as  he  pleases.  In  that 
benign  way  the  blessings  of  the  British  constitution 
have  been  bestowed  on  Ireland. 

To-day  there  are  hundreds  of  persons  in  prison  in 
Ireland,  unaccused,  untried,  to  be  kept  there,  in  all 
the  horrors  and  sufferings  of  prison-life,  as  long  as 
one  Englishman  in  Ireland — a  Mr.  Forster — pleases. 
These  persons  are  not  accused  of  having  committed 
any  crime.  A  Mr.  Forster,  an  Englishman  in  Ire- 
land, having  no  interest  in  the  country — a  "  carpet- 
bagger "  of  the  most  detestable  pattern — is  pleased 

403 


404        LIBERTY  AND   CRIME  IN  IRELAND. 

to  suspect  that .  perhaps  some  of  them  might,  under 
provocation,  possibly  break  a  window  or  throw  a 
stone  at  a  poHceman. 

Yet  Ireland  is  not  in  Russia. 

Yet  Ireland  is  not  at  war  with  any  enemy,  domes- 
tic or  foreign. 

Can  Americans  conceive  any  state  of  affairs  in 
which,  under  their  Constitution,  they  would  tolerate, 
in  time  of  profound  peace,  the  arrest  of  their  fellow- 
citizens,  on  suspicion,  by  a  foreigner  ?  Is  liberty  no 
dearer  to  the  people  of  Ireland  than  it  is  to  the  peo- 
ple of  the  United  States  } 

By  the  act  of  legislative  union,  passed  in  1800, 
England  was  solemnly  pledged  to  give  Ireland  the 
benefits  of  the  British  constitution  on  precisely  the 
same  terms  as  to  England  and  Scotland.  Yet  no 
less  than  fifty-nine  times  in  the  intervening  period  of 
eighty  years  has  the  constitution  been  withdrawn 
from  Ireland  and  every  vestige  of  personal  liberty 
there  destroyed. 

Was  it  because  Ireland  exceeds  in  criminality 
England  and  Scotland?  Here  are  the  official  re- 
turns for  twenty  years.  Let  the  reader  observe, 
first,  the  population  of  the  several  countries,  then 
the  number  of  convictions  for  criminal  offences,  not 
forgetting  that  as  "justice"  has  been  administered  in 
Ireland  judges  are  dependents  on  the  Crown  and 
juries  must  take  their  verdicts  from  the  judges' 
lips : 


LIBERTY  AND   CRIME   IN  IRELAND. 


405 


Number  of  Convictions  for  Criminal  Offences  in  Eng- 
land and  Wales,  Scotland  and  Ireland  from  1860 
to  1879  inclusive. 


Year. 

England  and  Wales. 

Scotland. 

Ireland, 

Conyicts. 

Population. 

Convicts. 

Population. 

Convicts. 

Population.^ 

i860.    . 

12,068 

19,902,713 

2.414 

3.054,738 

2,979 

5,820,960 

1861  .    . 

15,879 

20.119.314 

2,418 

3,066,633 

3.271 

5.788,415 

1862  .    . 

15,312 

20,352,140 

2,693 

3,097,867 

3,796 

5,775,028 

1B63  .    . 

15,799 

30,590,356 

2,438 

3,126.587 

3,285 

5,716,975 

1864,    . 

14,726 

20,834,496 

2,359 

3.155,595 

3,000 

5,638,487 

1865.    . 

14,740 

21,085,139 

2.355 

3.184.873 

2,66i 

5,591,896 

1866  .    . 

14,254 

21,342,864 

2,292 

3,214,426 

2,418 

5,519,523 

^1^.1'    ' 

14,207 

21,608,286 

2.510 

3,244,254 

2,733 

5,482,459 

1868  .    . 

15,033 

21,882,059 

2.490 

3,274,360 

2,394 

5,461,299 

1869  .    . 

14,340 

22,164.847 

2,592 

3,304.747 

2,452 

5,443,919 

1870.    . 

12,953 

22,457,366 

2,400 

3.335.418 

3,048 

5,412,660 

1871  .    . 

11,946 

22,760,359 

2,184 

3.366,375 

2,257 

5,386,708 

1872  .    . 

10,862 

23,067,535 

2,259 

3,399,226 

2,565 

5,368,696 

1873.    . 

11,089 

23.356,414 

2,110 

3.'462,'9i6 

2.542 

5,337.261 

1874.    . 

11,509 

23,648,609 

2.231 

2.367 

5,314.844 

1875  .    . 

10,954 

23.944.459 

2,203 

3,495,214 

2,484 

5.309.494 

1876.    . 

12,195 

24,744,010 

2,051 

3,527.811 

2,343 

5,321,618 

'In-  • 

11,942 

24.547,309 

2,009 

3.560,715 

2.300 

5,338,906 

1878  .  . 

12,473 

34.854.397 

2,273 

3,593,929 

2,292 

5,351,060 

.879.. 

12.525 

25.165,336 

2,090 

3.627,453 

2,207 

5,362,337 

Taking  round  numbers,  when,  in  i860,  the  pop- 
ulation of  England  and  Wales  was  four  times  that 
of  Ireland,  the  number  of  convictions  for  crime  was 
five  times  that  of  Ireland.  In  that  year  the  pop- 
ulation of  Scotland  was  more  than  two  millions  less 
than  the  population  of  Ireland,  and  the  criminal  con- 
victions lacked  only  a  few  hundreds  of  those  of  Ire- 
land. Five  years  later,  when  the  population  of  Eng- 
land and  Wales  was  four  times  that  of  Ireland,  crime 
was  six  times  greater;  while,  in  Scotland,  whose 
population  was  only  three-fifths  that  of  Ireland,  the 
number  of  criminal  convictions  showed  but  slight 
difference.  In  1870  the  ratio  is  more  even  in  pro- 
portion to  population. 


406        LIBERTY  AND    CRIME  IN  IRELAND. 

Let  US  compare  Irish  and  Scotch  crime  from  1875 
for  five  years,  keeping  in  mind  that,  in  round  num- 
bers, the  population  of  Scotland  is  three-fifths  tliat 
of  Ireland.  It  will  be  observed  that,  proportionate- 
ly, Scotch  crime  exceeds  Irish  crime : 

Year.                                             Scotland.  Ireland. 

1875 .  2,205  2,484 

1876  ..........  2,051  2,343 

1877  .    .    .    . 2,009  2,300 

1878.    ........    .2,273 

1879 2,090  .        2,207 

That  arrests  are  made  much  more  recklessly  and 
unjustifiably  in  Ireland  than  in  England,  Wales  or 
Scotland  is  shown  by  the  proportion  of  convictions 
to  committals.  In  England  and  Wales,  for  1840 
and  1879,  it  was,  respectively,  seventy-three  and 
seventy-six  per  cent. ;  in  Scotland,  seventy-five  and 
seventy-seven  per  cent. ;  in  Ireland,  forty-six  and 
fifty  per  cent.  It  was  not  in  Ireland  that  the  habeas 
corpus  should  have  been  suspended,  for,  from  1840 
to  1879,  crime  in  Ireland  declined  eighty-two  per 
cent,  while  in  England  the  diminution  was  only 
forty-nine  per  cent,  and  in  Scotland  only  thirty-one 
per  cent 

It  may  be  urged  that  if  habeas  corpus  had  not 
been  so  often  suspended  in  Ireland,  crime  would  be 
greater.  An  examination  of  the  figures  from  1875 
to  1879 — during  which  period  there  was  no  inter- 
ference with  personal  liberty — is  a  more  than  suffi- 
cient answer. 


LIBERTY  AND    CRIME   IN  IRELAND.        4O9 

The  character  of  the  crime  in  the  three  countries 
should  also  be  considered.  If,  in  Ireland,  a  too 
vivacious  man  cracks  a  joke  at  a  policeman,  he  is 
reasonably  certain  of  arrest ;  in  England  a  citizen 
may  do  everything  to  a  policeman,  short  of  cracking 
his  skull,  before  he  is  arrested.  In  Ireland  the  con- 
stabulary are  armed  with  revolvers,  rifles,  swords, 
which  they  use  mercilessly  on  the  smallest  pretence ; 
every  American  who  has  been  in  London  knows  that 
a  policeman  cannot  employ  even  his  club  upon  an 
offender  except  in  absolute  self-defence.  In  Ireland 
one  of  the  "  crimes  "  which  swell  the  aggregate  of 
arrests  is  called  "  intimidation."  If  A,  who  is 
*'  loyal,"  is  accidentally  or  wilfully  jostled  by  B, 
who  is  a  Land-Leaguer,  that  is  a  case  of  "  intim- 
idation;" B  goes  to  jail,  and  his  crime  is  included 
in  the  total  of  that  month's  "  outrages."  A  very 
large  proportion  of  the  so-called  "  criminal  offences  " 
of  Ireland  are  of  so  trivial  a  character  that  in  any 
other  country  in  the  world  no  official  notice  would 
be  taken  of  them. 

Philadelphia  is  a  well-behaved  city :  it  is  the  "  City 
of  Brotherly  Love."  The  tranquil  inhabitant  of  its 
historic  soil  possibly  suspects  that  life  and  property 
in  Ireland  are  utterly  unsafe.  Yet  in  Philadelphia — 
a  model  city,  the  "  City  of  Brotherly  Love  " — whose 
population  is  sixteen  per  cent,  that  of  Ireland,  crime 
of  all  kinds  is  very  much  greater.  In  Philadelphia, 
in  1879,  there  were  forty-nine  homicides;  in  Ireland 
there  were  four  persons  found  guilty  of  murder. 


410 


LIBERTY  AND    CRIME   IN  IRELAND. 


The  following  table^  perfectly  illustrates  that,  in 
proportion  to  population  and  to  gravity  of  offence 
there  is  less  crime  in  Ireland  than  in  England  and 
Scotland : 


Classes  of  more  serious 
offences. 

Irish. 

English. 

Scotch. 

Difference  between 
Irish  and  English 

Offences  in 
1878. 

Proportionate 
uiinibers     in 
1877  for  same 
population. 

Proportionate 
ninnbers     in 
1877  for  same 
population. 

figures. 

Irish, 
less. 

English, 
less. 

Irish  numbers  less  than 
English     and    Scotch 
total  of  more  serious 
offences  

Offences   against    prop- 
erty without  violence 

Offences   against    prop- 
erty, with  violence    . 

Suicide 

Attempts  to  commit  su- 
icide        

Forgery,  etc 

Offences  against  purity 

Perjury 

2886 
700 

458 

93 

69 

90 

142 

15 

4189 

1774 

1014 
291 

195 
157 
200 

33 

5925 
1065 

3175 
163 

108 

162 

281 

27 

1303 
1074 

556 
234 

126 

I 

Is  there  any  justification  for  the  arbitrary  abolition 
of  personal  liberty  in  Ireland  ? 

^  Prepared  by  Mr.  Henry  Bellingliain,  M.  P. 


CHAPTER    XV. 
THE  LAND  LAWS. 

LET  us  consider  candidly  the  measures  which  the 
English  government  has  taken  from  time  to 
time  to  remedy  the  misfortunes  which  English  law 
in  Ireland  has  visited  upon  the  Irish  tenant. 

When  the  Irish  Parliament  was  abolished,  in  1800, 
the  promise  was  made  among  many  that  imperial 
legislation  for  Ireland  should  be  just  and  liberal. 
How  has  the  promise  been  kept? 

Said  John  Bright  in  1866  on  the  floor  of  the  House 
of  Commons  :  "  Sixty-five  years  ago  this  Parliament 
undertook  to  govern  Ireland.  I  will  say  nothing  of 
the  manner  in  which  that  duty  was  brought  upon 
us,  except  that  it  was  by  proceedings  disgraceful  and 
corrupt  to  the  last  degree.  During  these  sixty-five 
years  there  are  only  three  considerable  measures 
which  Parliament  has  passed  in  the  interest  of  Ire- 
land. One  of  them  was  the  measure  of  1829  for  the 
emancipation  of  the  Catholics.  .  .  .  But  that  meas- 
ure, so  just,  so  essential,  and  which,  of  course,  is  not 
ever  to  be  recalled,  was  a  measure  which  the  chief 
minister  of  the  day,  a  great  soldier  and  a  great  judge 

411 


412  THE  LAND  LAWS. 

of  military  matters,  admitted  was  passed  under  the 
menace  of,  and  only  because  of  the  danger  of,  civil 
war.  The  other  two  measures  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred are  that  for  the  rehef  of  the  poor  and  that  for 
the  sale  of  the  encumbered  estates ;  and  those  meas- 
ures were  introduced  to  the  .  House  and  passed 
through  the  House  in  the  emergency  of  a  famine 
more  severe  than  any  that  has  desolated  any  Chris- 
tian country  of  the  world  within  the  last  four  hun- 
dred years.  Except  on  these  two  emergencies,  I 
appeal  to  every  Irish  member,  and  to  every  English 
member  who  has  paid  any  attention  to  the  matter, 
whether  the  statement  is  not  true  that  this  Parlia- 
ment has  done  nothing  for  the  people  of  Ireland." 
In  1866,  on  another  occasion,  John  Bright  said  : 
"  The  great  evil  of  Ireland  is  this,  that  the  Irish  peo- 
ple— the  Irish  nation — are  dispossessed  of  the  soil ; 
and  what  we  ought  to  do  is  provide  for  and  aid  in 
their  restoration  to  it  by  all  measures  of  justice. 
Why  should  we  tolerate  in  Ireland  the  law  of  prim- 
ogeniture ?  Why  should  we  tolerate  the  system  of 
entails  ?  Why  should  the  object  of  the  law  be  to 
accumulate  land  in  great  masses  in  few  hands,  and  to 
make  it  almost  impossible  for  persons  of  small  means 
and  tenant-farmers  to  become  possessors  of  land? 
If  you  go  to  other  countries — for  example,  to  Nor- 
way, to  Denmark,  to  Holland,  to  Belgium,  to  France, 
to  Germany,  to  Italy  or  to  the  United  States — you 
will  find  that  in  all  these  countries  those  laws  of 
which  I  complain  have  been  abolished,  and  the  land 


THE   LAND  LAWS.  -41 3 

is  just  as  free  to  buy  and  sell  and  hold  and  cultivate 
as  any  other  description  of  property  in  the  kingdom. 
...  If  my  advice  were  taken,  we  should  have  a  par- 
liamentary commission  empowered  to  buy  up  the 
large  estates  in  Ireland  belonging  to  the  English 
nobility,  for  the  purpose  of  selling  them  on  easy 
terms  to  the  occupiers  of  the  farms  and  to  the 
tenantry  of  Ireland.  .  .  .  What  you  want  is  to  re- 
store to  Ireland  a  middle-class  proprietary  of  the 
soil ;  and  I  venture  to  say  that  if  these  estates 
could  be  purchased  and  could  be  sold  out,  farm  by 
farm,  to  the  tenant-occupiers  in  Ireland,  it  would  be 
infinitely  better  in  a  conservative  sense  than  that  they 
should  belong  to  great  proprietors  living  out  of  the 
country.  ...  I  have  often  asked  myself  whether 
patriotism  is  dead  in  Ireland.  Cannot  all  the  peo- 
ple of  Ireland  see  that  the  calamities  of  their  country 
are  the  creatures  of  the  law,  and,  if  that  be  so,  that 
just  laws  only  can  remove  them  ?" 

Still  later  in  the  same  year  Mr.  Bright  defined  in 
detail  his  plan  for  the  purchase  of  a  portion  of  the 
Irish  land  by  the  government  and  its  sale  to  actual 
occupiers. 

In  1868,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  Mr.  Bright 
again  spoke  on  peasant  proprietary  in  Ireland.  He 
proposed  that  the  state  lend  the  money  to  the  tenant 
to  buy,  securing  itself  and  giving  him  thirty-one  or 
thirty-five  years  to  refund  it.  "  I  would  negotiate 
with  land-owners  who  were  willing  to  sell  the  tenants 

who  were  willing  to  buy,  and  I  would  make  the  land 

26 


414  77/^   LAND    LAWS. 

the  great  savings-bank  for  the  future  tenantry  of  Ire- 
land." 

The  still  more  recent  speeches  of  Mr.  Bright  have 
been  in  the  same  vein.  I  have  preferred  to  quote 
from  those  made  in  former  years  to  show  that  the 
proposition  to  buy  a  portion  of  the  land  in  Ireland  is 
not  a  novel  one,  and  that  it  was  advocated  by  an 
eminent  English  economist  before  the  Irish  Land 
League  came  into  existence. 

The  Catholic  Emancipation  Act  of  1829  removed 
all  political  disabilities  (with  some  exceptions  not 
worth  noticing  in  this  place)  which  had  kept  four- 
fifths  of  the  people  of  Ireland  from  the  civil  rights 
enjoyed  by  the  one-fifth.  But  it  did  not  restore  to 
the  heirs  of  those  whose  civil  rights  had  been  taken 
away  by  the  penal  laws  the  land  which  had  been 
confiscated  by  those  laws.  Had  O'Connell  been  as 
wise  as  he  was  energetic,  he  would  have  made  the 
restoration  oi  the  land  a  condition  of  the  abolition 
of  the  statutes  in  accordance  with  which  the  land 
was  confiscated.  It  may  be  objected  that  this  would 
have  been  impracticable,  on  account  of  transfers  and 
the  difficulty  of  establishing  heirship.  The  simplest 
way  would  have  been  perfectly  satisfactory  to  a  ma- 
jority of  the  people.  The  rights  of  the  owners  in 
possession  could  have  been  respected,  as  they  were 
in  Prussia  in  the  beginning  of  the  century,  and  in 
Russia  in  the  latter  half  of  it.  The  state,  which 
took  the  land  away  from  the  people  of  Ireland  with- 
out compensation,  could  have  found  a  way  to  restore 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  415 

it  to  them  by  compensating  those  who  had  obtained 
possession  of  it.  Peasant  proprietors  could  have 
been  easily  created  in  Ireland  fifty  years  ago. 

But  the  land  was  not  restored.  The  heirs  of  the 
original  owners  had  sunk  into  tenantry  and  poverty. 
The  land  remains  in  the  possession  of  the  heirs  of 
those  who  obtained  it  first  by  confiscation.  What 
has  the  British  Parliament  done  to  improve  their 
condition  ? 

Nearly  half  a  century  passed  without  the  adoption 
of  a  single  measure  to  that  end !     Then  what? 

Poor  relief  is  the  first  lien  on  land  in  England. 
The  like  law  providing  for  the  relief  of  the  poor  of 
Ireland  was  not  passed  until  1846,  and  then  only 
because  the  famine-shadow  was  already  apparent. 
But  the  law  does  not  operate  to  support  the  poor. 
If  the  people  of  Ireland  had  not  been  furnished  with 
money  to  buy  food  from  the  landlords  last  winter,  the 
mortality  would  have  compared  with  that  of  1847. 

The  law  is  so  constructed  that  the  burden  is  a 
minimum  on  the  landlord,  and  when  famine  comes 
the  people  must  die  if  a  foreign  charity  does  not 
hasten  to  their  succor.  This  was  abundantly  proven 
last  winter  and  spring. 

The  next  legislation  to  modify  the  evils  of  the 
Irish  land  system  was  the  Encumbered  Estates 
Act.  But  that  was  an  act  for  the  relief  of  Irish 
landlords. 

Until  its  passage  in  1 848  the  law  of  primogeniture 
and  entail,  still  the  law  o{  England,  was  the  law  in 


4l6  THE  LAND   LAWS. 

Ireland.  The  Encumbered  Estates  Act  set  that  law 
aside.  It  compelled  the  sale  of  estates  encumbered 
to  half  their  value.  The  sale  was  made  on  the  peti- 
tion of  the  owner  or  of  any  of  his  creditors,  and  the 
proceeds  were  divided  among  the  claimants.  In 
1858  to  that  law  was  added  the  Landed  Estates 
Act,  by  which  the  courts  can  deal  with  unencum- 
bered as  well  as  with  encumbered  estates.  Un- 
der the  old  law  of  primogeniture  and  entail  many 
of  the  Irish  landlords  had  hopelessly  bankrupted 
themselves.  "A  mountain-load  of  mortgages  or 
a  network  of  settlements  rendered  them  power- 
less." The  law  freeing  them  of  their  bonds  put 
the  land  in  the  market  and  enabled  them  to  get 
rid  of  their  debts.  But  at  the  time  the  law  was 
passed  there  was  no  market  for  land.  The  fam- 
ine had  paralyzed  the  country.  The  immediate 
effect  of  the  law,  therefore,  was  to  rob  many  cred- 
itors of  their  just  dues.  The  law  compelled  cred- 
itors to  submit  to  a  sale,  notwithstanding  that  they 
had  an  express  contract  that  no  one  should  ever 
disturb  them  in  their  claim  on  the  land  except  by 
paying  the  claim  in  full.  The  new  law  coerced  vi- 
olation of  contract.  Says  Professor  Cairnes  :  "  It 
proceeded  according  to  rules  unknown  to  our  sys- 
tem of  jurisprudence  ;  it  set  aside  solemn  contracts  ; 
it  disregarded  the  cherished  traditions  of  real-prop- 
erty law."  He  admits  that  it  would  not  be  easy  to 
disturb  the  statements  of  Isaac  Butt  that  at  a  time 
of  unprecedented  depreciation  of  the  value  of  land 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  4I9 

it  compelled  a  general  auction  of  Irish  estates,  and 
that  no  more  violent  interference  with  vested  rights 
can  be  found  in  English  history.  But,  notwithstand- 
ing the  justness  of  this  criticism,  does  any  one  con- 
demn the  principle  of  the  law?  Professor  Cairnes 
admits  that  according  to  the  received  maxims  of 
English  jurisprudence  it  was  a  measure  of  confisca- 
tion ;  "  yet  it  is  not  less  certain  that  of  all  measures 
passed  in  recent  times  it  is  that  one  of  which  the 
beneficial  effects  have  been  most  widely  and  cordially 
recognized."  If  the  English  government  for  Ireland 
could  pass,  more  than  thirty  years  ago,  a  law  for  the 
benefit  of  Irish  landlords,  invading  vested  rights, 
need  so  much  outcry  be  made  about  a  proposition 
to  pass  a  law  for  the  benefit  of  Irish  tenants  which 
may  apparently,  but  will  not  actually,  assail  vested 
rights  ? 

We  have  seen  two  pieces  of  legislation  which 
were  intended  to  affect  the  Irish  land  tenure.  The 
first  was  a  law  making  the  support  of  the  poor  a  lien 
on  the  land;  it  is  so  constructed  as  to  make  Irish 
poverty  a  lien  instead  on  the  charity  of  the  world. 

The  second  was  the  Encumbered  Estates  Act. 
But  that  was  for  the  benefit  of  Irish  landlords. 

The  third  was  the  Gladstone  Land  Law  of  1870. 

Its  aim  was  good.  On  its  passage  through  Par- 
liament it  encountered  no  less  than  three  hundred 
amendments.  When  it  emerged  from  the  legislature 
and  entered  the  presence  of  Her  Majesty  for  signa- 
ture, it  had  not  confiscated  a  single  valuable  right 


420  THE  LAND  LAWS. 

of  the  Irish  landlord,  says  the  approved  biographer 
of  its  author. 

The  avowed  object  of  the  Liberal  minister  was  to 
make  Ulster  tenant-right  law  throughout  Ireland. 
That  was  all.  Ulster  tenant  right  is  an  institution 
which  sadly  recalls  the  pitiless  efforts  of  former  days 
to  drive  the  Irish  people  off  the  land  of  their  coun- 
try for  the  purpose  of  planting  it  with  foreign  col- 
onists. The  tenant-farmers  in  Ulster  were  chiefly 
Protestants,  Irish,  Scotch  and  English,  and  to  encour- 
age them  it  was  agreed  by  common  consent  that  they 
should  have  continuous  occupancy  of  their  farms  at 
fair  rent.  In  other  words,  they  were  given  fixity  of 
tenure.  The  abstract  right  became  a  substantial 
property.  If  the  tenant  chose  to  give  up  his  farm, 
he  had  the  right  to  sell  his  fixity  of  tenure  as  a  kind 
of  good-will  to  his  successor.  The  substantial  value 
of  the  tenant-right  was  based  on  the  improvements 
effected  by  him  on  the  land.  These  improvements 
did  not  become  the  property  of  the  landlord ;  they 
remained  the  property  of  the  tenant,  and  gave  him  a 
sort  of  partnership  in  the  land.  This  was  tenant- 
right.  The  custom  which  fostered  it  never  obtained 
in  other  parts  of  the  kingdom,  where  the  landlords 
were  of  one  religion  and  the  tenants  of  another. 
Tenant-right  did  not  secure  against  eviction  for  non- 
payment of  rent.  But  if  the  tenant  were  compelled 
to  give  up  his  holding  because  he  could  not  meet 
his  obligation  to  the  landlord,  he  was  not  turned  out 
penniless  into  the   road.     He  could  dispose  of  his 


THE  LAND   LAWS.  421 

tenant-right  to  whoever  would  pay  him  the  highest 
price  for  it ;  the  debt  to  the  landlord  was  the  first  to 
be  settled  out  of  the  proceeds ;  the  balance  was  his 
own.  It  was,  and  is,  in  fact,  compensation  for  im- 
provements paid  on  eviction,  not  by  the  landlord,  but 
by  the  incoming  tenant,  who  thus  acquires  a  right  of 
ownership  in  them  and  can  in  his  turn  dispose  of 
them.  The  Gladstone  act  of  1 870  attempted  to  make 
this  practice  of  a  locality  the  law  for  the  country. 

But  it  was  only  a  fair-weather  law.  It  should 
have  been  accompanied  by  a  consort  statute  pro- 
viding for  perennially  good  harvests.  When  the 
bad  crops  came  there  were  wholesale  evictions  for 
non-payment  of  rent ;  yet  the  failure  of  the  tenants 
to  meet  their  obligations  was  not  their  fault ;  it  was 
the  "  act  of  God."  What  good  was  Ulster  tenant- 
right  then?  The  tenants  who  had  not  crops  enough 
to  pay  rent  had  no  money  to  buy  tenant-right  from 
other  tenants  equally  unfortunate.  Besides,  the  value 
of  the  tenant-right  was  unstable,  shifting,  uncertain, 
In  many  cases  it  was  simply  intangible.  The  evict- 
ed tenant  had  to  go  out ;  if  the  condition  of  the 
market  was  such  that  there  was  no  one  to  buy  his 
tenant-right,  what  good  did  the  act  of  1870  do  him  ? 
The  premier's  biographer  was  remarkably  correct 
when  he  said  that  the  act  did  not  take  away  a  single 
valuable  right  of  the  Irish  landlord. 

The  act  of  1870  was  land  reform  on  hypothesis. 
It  did  not  touch  the  landlord;  it  did  not  always 
touch  the  tenant.     In  a  season  of  high  rents  and 


422  THE   LAND   LA  VVS. 

fine  crops  it  afforded  the  tenant  such  compensation 
for  his  improvements  as  he  could  induce  some  other 
tenant  to  pay  him.  If  he  could  find  no  one  to  pay 
him  anything,  he  must  submit  to  his  misfortune. 
He  lost  his  farm,  and  all  the  labor  and  all  the 
money  he  may  have  expended  on  it. 

There  was  a  bill  with  a  misleading  title  introduced 
into  the  last  session.  It  was  called  "  The  Compen- 
sation for  Disturbance  Bill."  It  was  an  attempt  to 
compel  landlords  to  allow  to  tenants  evicted  for 
non-payment  of  rent  compensation  for  improve- 
ments, provided  it  was  legally  proven  that  their 
failure  to  meet  their  obligation  was  due  to  famine. 
The  bill  passed  the  Commons,  and  was  thrown  out 
by  the  Lords.  If  anything  were  wanting  to  demon- 
strate that  the  Gladstone  act  was  hypothetical  and 
fair-weather  law,  the  introduction  of  the  last  measure 
is  sufficient. 

This  completes  the  entire  record  which  the  Brit- 
ish Parliament  has  made  for  itself  in  reforming  the 
Irish  land  laws  to   1881. 

But  was  the  English  government  equally  neglect- 
ful of  the  Irish  landlord  ?  Did  it  merely  neglect  the 
Irish  tenant,  forgetting  his  existence,  or  were  oppor- 
tunities for  helping  him  thrust  on  it  and  declined  ? 

It  is  an  error  to  suppose  that  this  question  of  the 
relation  of  tenant  and  landlord  in  Ireland  is  a  new 
one :  it  has  been  discussed  throughout  the  entire  pe- 
riod in  which  that  relation  has  endured.  There  is  an 
immense  literature  upon  it,  and  there  is  nothing  to  be 


THE   LAND  LAWS.  423 

said  of  it  to-day  which  has  not  been  said  frequently 
for  a  hundred  years.  This  hterature  is  not  famihar  in 
the  United  States,  for  two  reasons :  we  have  never 
had  a  land  question,  and  we  get  our  literature  mainly 
from  England.  In  the  English  literary  market  books 
and  pamphlets  on  the  Irish  land  question  have  not 
been  in  favor ;  no  English  publisher  had  any  interest 
in  circulating  information  which  would  tend  to  restore 
the  publishing  trade  that  Dublin  had  before  the  act  of 
legislative  union,  abolishing  the  Irish  Parliament  and 
compelling  Ireland  to  send  over  to  London  not  only 
for  all  the  manufactured  articles  she  wanted,  but  for 
her  laws. 

The  literature  which  is  extant  in  Ireland,  and  now 
more  abundantly  than  ever  before  in  this  country,  is 
full  of  testimony  to  these  facts :  That  the  English 
Parliament  knew  very  well  the  existence  and  the 
grievances  of  the  Irish  tenant,  the  existence  and  the 
oppressiveness  of  the  Irish  landlords,  and  that  al- 
though no  law  was  passed  until  '46  for  the  benefit 
of  the  tenant,  and  no  land  law  which  pretended  to 
confer  any  substantial  benefit  upon  him  until  1870, 
laws  were  frequently  passed  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Irish  landlord,  and  bills  introduced  for  the  benefit  of 
the  tenant  were  utterly  ignored  or  thrown  out. 

The  Irish  landlord  was  given  privileges  and  pow- 
ers which  were  denied  the  English  landlord.  The 
title  of  many  English  landlords  to-day  is  no  better 
than  that  of  the  Irish  landlords ;  they  acquired,  with- 
out paying  for  them,  estates  which  the  Crown  confis- 


424  THE   LAND   LAWS. 

cated,  sometimes  from  individual  owners,  sometimes 
from  the  general  public.  But  when  the  distress  of 
the  landless  English  people  became  so  great  that 
they  were  in  danger  of  extreme  suffering,  the  "  Poor 
Law  "  was  passed,  making  the  tax  for  the  support  of 
the  poor  the  first  lien  on  the  land,  the  first  tax  to  be 
collected.  No  such  law  was  passed  for  Ireland  until 
the  awful  famine-time  of  '46 ;  and,  as  its  enforcement 
was  in  the  landlords'  hands,  they  were  careful  of  their 
own  interests  in  applying  its  provisions. 

Soon  after  the  act  of  union  the  English  began  leg- 
islating in  favor  of  the  Irish  landlords.  They  already 
possessed  enormous  powers  over  the  tenants ;  in  the 
reign  of  George  III.  they  were  authorized  to  seize 
the  growing  crops  of  the  tenant  for  rent,  hold  them 
until  ripe,  compel  the  tenant  to  care  for  and  protect 
them,  pay  all  expenses  incurred  while  doing  so ;  and 
then  they  sold  the  crops.  As  if  that  was  not  enough 
to  drive  the  ruined  tenant  into  the  mad-house  or  the 
jail,  they  were  subsequently  in  the  same  reign  given 
new  powers  to  evict  him.  Under  the  reign  of  George 
IV.  these  prerogatives  were  still  further  enlarged,  even 
to  compelling  the  tenant  to  furnish  security  to  the  land- 
lords in  ejectment  suits.  In  the  same  reign  the  Irish 
landlord  was  given  the  privilege  of  immediate  execu- 
tion of  judgment  against  a  tenant.  He  could  make 
up  his  mind  at  seven  in  the  morning  to  drive  a  hun- 
dred families  off  his  estate ;  he  had  only  to  apply  to 
the  nearest  qualified  representative  of  the  English 
government,  get  his  order,  send  his  crowbars  and 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  425 

muskets  down  among  the  tenantry,  and  in  a  few 
minutes  the  hundred  families  would  be  on  the  road- 
side or  in  the  ditches,  with  no  prospect  ahead  but 
death  or  imprisonment.  Can  any  American  wonder 
that  there  is  crime  in  Ireland  ?  But  we  shall  see  later 
the  nature  and  the  enormity  of  the  crime.  During  the 
reign  of  William  IV.  the  Irish  landlord  was  accorded 
still  larger  powers,  and  from  the  passage  of  the  first 
of  these  landlord  laws  until  1846  thirty-two  bills  were 
passed  by  the  English  Parliament  for  the  benefit  of 
the  Irish  landlord,  and  not  one  for  the  relief  of  his 
wretched  victim,  the  Irish  tenant. 

The  great  famine  of  '46  and  the  subsequent  years 
resulted  in  an  effort  to  get  the  English  Parliament  to 
consider  the  condition  of  the  Irish  tenants,  a  million  of 
whom  had  died.  In  1852  a  bill  was  introduced ;  it  pro- 
posed again  merely  the  proposition  of  the  Gladstone 
bill  of  ten  years  ago — the  extension  of  Ulster  tenant- 
right  ;  it  was  rejected.  Later  in  the  same  session  an- 
other bill  was  introduced  by  the  government;  it  passed 
the  Commons,  but  was  rejected  by  the  Lords.  In  1 85  5 
another  bill  of  the  same  tenor  was  introduced ;  nothing 
came  of  it.  In  1857  another  bill  was  introduced;  it 
did  not  get  even  a  hearing.  In  1858  another  bill  was 
introduced,  asking  only  that  the  tenant  should  be  al- 
lowed compensation  for  the  permanent  improvements 
effected  by  him  on  the  land ;  it  was  thrown  out  on 
second  reading.  A  bill  was  passed  in  i860  which  did 
not  alter  the  status  of  either  landlord  or  tenant. 

The  inadequacy  of  the  Gladstone  law  of  1870  was 


426  THE   LAND   LAWS. 

SO  apparent  from  the  beginning  that  frequent  attempts 
were  made  to  induce  the  English  Parliament  to  ex- 
amine into  the  atrocious  wrongs  still  inflicted  on  the 
Irish  tenant,  and  in  nine  years  no  less  than  eighteen 
land  bills  were  introduced,  no  one  of  which  asked 
aught  for  the  tenant  but  the  recognition  of  his  equity 
in  the  permanent  improvement  of  the  farm  by  his 
labor.     Not  one  of  them  was  treated  with  civility. 

We  reach  now  the  Land  Act  of  1881,  of  which  so 
much  has  been  said.  In  its  original  draft  it  was  a 
wholesome  measure.  It  reaffirmed  the  principles  of 
the  law  of  1 8  70,  which  Mr.  Gladstone  had  fondly  be- 
lieved would  not  only  transform  the  Irish  tenant  into 
a  peaceable,  loyal  and  successful  tenant-farmer,  but 
would  enable  him  in  time  to  become  a  peasant  pro- 
prietor ;  for  even  Mr.  Gladstone  favored  peasant  pro- 
prietary in  Ireland  long  before  the  organization  of 
the  Land  League,  and  in  the  bill  of  1870  there  are 
what  are  known  as  the  "  Bright  clauses,"  which  pro- 
vide for  governmental  purchase  of  the  land  and  its  sale 
to  the  tenants  in  the  manner  described  by  Mr.  Bright. 

But  to  make  land  laws  in  the  English  Parliament 
for  the  Irish  landlords  is  one  thing,  and  to  compel  the 
Irish  landlords  to  comply  with  those  laws  is  quite 
another.  Instead  of  doing  anything  in  harmony  with 
the  Land  Act  of  1870,  the  majority  of  the  Irish  land- 
lords, taking  advantage  of  its  loose  construction,  lit- 
erally cheated  the  tenants  out  of  its  possible  benefits. 
They  compelled  the  tenants  to  make  leases  by  which 
they  .contracted  theniselves  out  of  the  scope  of  the 


.6' 


SEARCHING  FOR  ARMS. 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  At'2.^ 

law  altogether.  The  result  was  soon  apparent :  the 
landlords  had  rendered  the  law  inoperative.  This 
was  strikingly  illustrated  in  the  necessity  which  Mr. 
Gladstone  felt  in  accepting  from  Mr.  Parnell  and  his 
supporters  the  terms  of  the  "  Compensation  for  Dis- 
turbance "  Bill.  There  was  nothing  in  that  bill  which 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  Land  Act  of  1870 ;  yet  the 
House  of  Lords  rejected  it,  and  the  minister  who 
had  carried  through  the  same  provision  ten  years 
previousl}^  submitted  to  the  affront  put  upon  him  by 
the  hereditary  legislators,  and  abandoned  to  their 
fate  thousands  of  the  Irish  tenantry  for  whom  evic- 
tion was,  almost  in  his  own  words,  a  sentence  of 
death.  He  told  Parliament  that  if  the  Compensation 
for  Disturbance  Bill  did  not  pass,  fifteen  thousand 
Irish  tenants  would  probably  be  turned  out ;  and,  he 
added,  "  a  sentence  of  eviction  is  almost  equivalent 
to  a  sentence  of  starvation." 

The  English  House  of  Lords  was  sublimely  in- 
different to  the  starvation  of  any  number  of  thousands 
of  Irish  tenants.  That  was  an  old  story  for  its  noble 
members :  it  did  not  touch  their  sensibilities  in  the 
least.  The  peers  rejected  the  bill,  although  it  was 
widely  believed  that  if  they  did  Mr.  Gladstone  would 
appeal  to  the  country.  They  rejected  the  bill ;  but 
Mr.  Gladstone,  for  reasons  known  to  himself,  accept- 
ed the  affront,  and  was  meek  under  it. 

When  the  Land  Act  which  is  now  the  law  was 
introduced  it  was  affirmed,  with  apparently  sound 
reason,  that  the  House  of  Lords  would  throw  out 
2'i 


430  THE.    LAND   LAWS. 

that  also.  It  could  not  be  expected  that,  having 
violently  strained  at  the  gnat,  it  would  amiably  swal- 
low the  camel.  Perhaps  we  shall  discover  that  it 
was  not  a  camel  it  finally  swallowed.  It  could  not 
have  been  passed  had  not  influential  landlords  impor- 
tuned the  Conservative  peers  to  vote  for  it. 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  of  honest  condemna- 
tion poured  out  in  this  country  upon  the  refusal  of 
the  Land-League  leaders  to  accept  the  Land  Law  of 
1 88 1,  and  upon  their  advice  to  the  Irish  tenants  to 
test  it  before  accepting  it.  If  a  State  legislature  in 
the  United  States  should  pass  a  real-estate  law  which 
was  declared  by  its  authors  to  be  a  practical  revolu- 
tion of  tenure,  it  is  probable  that  owners  of  land  and 
tenants  would  alike  be  careful  to  read  the  new  law 
before  rushing  into  court  to  become  bound  by  it.  Now, 
it  is  equally  reasonable  to  believe  that  the  Irish  land- 
lords .and  tenants  have  been  reading  the  new  Land 
Law  before  rushing  into  court  to  place  themselves 
under  its  terms.  The  expression  of  opinion  in  the 
United  States  concerning  the  law  is  based,  it  may 
be  apprehended,  on  a  considerable  want  of  accurate 
knowledge  concerning  the  contents  of  the  law ;  it  is 
within  bounds  to  say  that  not  one  man  in  each  hun- 
dred thousand  in  the  United  States  has  read  the  text 
of  the  law  or  can  give  an  intelligent  and  comprehen- 
sive statement  of  its  provisions.  The  impression 
which  exists  in  this  country  concerning  it  has  been 
created  entirely  by  those  agencies  whose  highest  in- 
terest is  to  exaggerate  the  benefits  of  the  bill. 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  43 1 

Americans  are  not  disposed  to  forget  how  per- 
sistently the  state  of  affairs  in  this  country  was  mis- 
represented abroad  by  Enghsh  news-agents  during 
the  civil  war.  They  do  not  forget,  for  they  never 
can,  that — so  astoundingly  false  had  been  the  con- 
tinuous narrative  sent  over  to  London  of  the  prog- 
ress of  the  war— when  the  intelhgence  of  the  sur- 
render of  Richmond  reached  the  clubs  the  loungers 
treated  it  as  a  good  joke;  that  very  day's  papers 
contained  the  usual  assertions  that  the  Union  forces 
were  being  everywhere  mercilessly  whipped,  and  that 
the  dissolution  of  the  Union,  the  destruction  of  our 
republic,  was  already  an  all  but  accomplished  fact. 
They  do  not  forget,  nor  shall  they  ever,  that,  so 
profound  was  the  conviction  in  England  that  our 
free  institutions  were  in  dissolution,  the  eminent 
English  historian  Freeman,  who  wrote  on  the  in- 
formation furnished  by  the  English  news-agents  on 
this  side,  actually  published  a  volume  now  curiously 
rare  in  American  book-stores.  It  was  entitled  A 
History  of  Federal  Government  from  the  Foundation 
of  the  AchcBan  League  to  the  Disruption  of  the  United 
States.  They  do  not  forget,  nor  can  they  ever,  that 
even  the  present  first  minister  of  England,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, publicly  declared  that  the  Union  was  fighting 
for  mere  power,  but  the  South  for  liberty.  They  do 
not  forget,  nor  can  they  ever,  that  the  great  mass  of 
the  English  politicians  sincerely  desired  the  success 
of  the  rebellion — not  because  they  loved  our  South- 
ern people,  whom  their  manufacturers  robbed,  taking 


432  2 HE   LAND    LAWS. 

advantage  of  their  dire  necessities,  but  because  they 
gloried  in  the  prospect  that  democratic  institutions 
were  about  to  be  extinguished  in  the  world.  They 
do  not  forget  that,  while  professing  neutrality,  rebel 
privateers  were  built,  manned,  equipped  and  com- 
missioned in  English  harbors,  and  that  each  soldier 
of  the  South  who  died  at  Antietam  carried  the  trade- 
mark of  a  Manchester  manufactory  on  every  button 
of  his  uniform.  It  is  not  gracious  to  recall  these 
things  now  ;  the  motive  is  its  own  excuse.  England 
hated  the  Southern  people  for  being  members  of  a 
free  confederation  democratic  in  essence  ;  in  their 
rebellion  she  saw  a  hope  of  the  extinction  of  democ- 
racy ;  in  their  extreme  poverty  she  saw  a  chance  to 
sell  at  swindling  prices  everything  they  needed  to 
prolong  the  war ;  and  when  they  failed  she  brazenly 
turned  around  and  exulted  with  the  victors,  avowing 
that  she  had  always  been  in  favor  of  the  Union! 
Her  perfidy  is  more  detested  to-day  in  the  Southern 
States  than  even  in  the  Northern,  and  with  a  good 
reason.  She  held  out  to  them  promises  that  were 
never  kept ;  she  traded  in  their  misfortunes  and 
abandoned  them  in  their  final  extremity.  Then  she 
taunted  them  with  their  failure. 

The  American  people,  South  and  North,  do  not 
forget,  nor  can  they  ever,  that  in  1881,  when  the 
assassin  struck  down  the  chief  executive  of  the 
American  republic,  the  English  court  ostentatiously 
went  into  a  week's  mourning  and  in  other  theatrical 
ways  sought  to  make  us  believe  how  deeply  their 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  433 

queen  and  government  shared  our  sorrow.  .But  in 
1 88 1  there  was  no  danger  of  the  disruption  of  the 
American  repubhc ;  our  friendship,  in  the  zenith 
of  our  power,  is  more  necessary  to  the  government 
of  Great  Britain  than  was  its  neutraHty  to  us  twenty 
years  ago.  But  neither  can  the  American  people  for- 
get that  when,  in  the  gloomy  days  of  the  civil  war, 
a  blow  struck  at  the  head  of  the  republic  was  a  blow 
that  touched  its  heart  and  sent  a  dreadful  thrill 
through  its  vitality, — when  Abraham  Lincoln  was 
assassinated  the  English  court  did  not  go  into 
mourning.  There  were  no  theatrical  displays  of 
sorrow  and  sympathy  then ;  the  foul  deed  was  sup- 
posed to  presage  our  utter  prostration  and  extinc- 
tion; English  statesmen  believed  that  the  rebellion 
would  assume  new  life,  and  would  march  on  to  tri- 
umph ;  that  the  Union  would  be  dissolved,  democ- 
racy would  shortly  be  extinct.  So  the  court  did 
not  go  into  mourning ! 

Recalling  these  significant  reminders  of  English 
misrepresentation  of  American  history,  is  it  not  fair 
for  Americans  to  apprehend  that  we  get  as  much 
truth  from  Ireland  through  these  same  wilful  agen- 
cies as  Europe  received  from  them  concerning  us 
twenty  years  ago  ?  We  know  almost  nothing  about 
the  Land  Act  of  this  year  except  what  English  com- 
mentators have  told  us.  We  know  almost  nothing 
about  crime  in  Ireland  except  what  the  English 
news-agents  tell  us.  They  have  so  grossly  misrep- 
resented its  quality  and  frequency  that  until  the  cold 


434  THE   LAND   LAWS. 

facts  are  spread  out  wc  are  likely  to  consider  all  Ire- 
land a  pandemonium.  The  population  of  Philadel- 
phia being  less  than  a  fifth  that  of  Ireland,  one  would 
say  that  if  five  times  the  number  of  homicides  that 
occurred  last  year  in  Philadelphia  should  have  oc- 
curred in  Ireland  it  v^^ould  indicate  that  Ireland  is  a 
rather  peaceful  country — one,  at  least,  in  which  there 
would  not  be  the  slightest  justification  for  suspend- 
ing habeas  corpus  or  interfering  with  the  freedom  of 
the  mass  of  the  people.  The  number  of  homicides 
in  Philadelphia  last  year  was  thirty-four;  we  may 
expect  at  least  a  hundred  and  seventy  in  Ireland, 
How  many  v/ere  there  ?  Not  a  hundred,  not  fifty, 
not  twenty-five,  not  ten  ;  just  five  persons  were  found 
guilty  of  murder ! 

If  English  newspapers  thus  grossly  mislead  con- 
cerning crime  in  Ireland,  are  they  more  truthful 
about  law  there  ? 

What,  in  brief,  are  the  main  features  of  the  Land 
Act  of  1 88 1,  and  why  should  the  Irish  people  not 
accept  it  and  become  quiet  and  contented,  pay  their 
rents,  attend  to  their  own  business,  cease  agitating  ? 

First,  because  the  law  itself  excludes  a  large  pro- 
portion of  them  from  its  benefits.  Those  to  whom 
the  law  denies  its  provisions  cannot  submit  to  them. 
It  excludes — 

1.  All  the  agricultural  laborers.  They  number 
four  hundred  thousand. 

2.  All  the  tenants  who  hold  under  leases.  Their 
number  is  not  anywhere  stated,  but  it  must.be  very 
great,  for  this  reason :  To  evade  the  Land  Law  of 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  435 

1 870  many  landlords  compelled  their  tenants  to  take 
leases  contracting  themselves  out  of  that  law,  and 
during  the  years  1878,  1879,  1880,  when  eviction 
stared  so  many  thousands  in  the  face,  the  landlords, 
fearing  that  the  distress  would  result  in  the  passage 
of  some  relief  measure,  as  the  famine  of  '47  resulted 
in  the  enactment  of  the  Poor  Law,  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity to  compel  their  tenants  to  take  leases  which 
would  exclude  them  from  the  provisions  of  any  law 
which  might  be  passed  to  the  hurt  of  the  landlord. 
The  new  law  provides  that  the  terms  of  the  leases 
shall  not  be  violated.  The  rent  under  these  leases 
may  be  a  rack-rent  of  the  most  approved  fashion, 
but  the  tenant  can  get  no  relief  from  the  new  law. 
3.  It  practically  excludes  all  tenants  who  are  in 
arrears  of  rent.  This  is  the  worst  of  the  bad  fea- 
tures of  the  law.  The  poor  harvests  of  three  years 
preceding  the  passage  of  the  bill  rendered  the  pay- 
ment of  the  rents  simply  impossible.  The  chief 
argument  in  favor  of  the  bill  was  that  it  would  save 
these  unhappy  victims  of  the  "  act  of  God "  from 
eviction,  from  death.  But  the  House  of  Lords 
struck  out  the  clause  making  the  law  retroactive. 
Mr.  Parnell  and  his  followers  made  a  noble  struggle 
to  rescue  the  clause,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  accepted  the 
Lords'  amendment.  There  is  a  tortuous  and  cum- 
bersome way  by  which,  with  the  assistance  of  the 
landlord,  one  class  of  tenants  in  arrears  may  get 
some  help  ;  but  as  it  imposes  on  the  tenant  an  obli- 
gation which   he  cannot   generally  discharge — the 


43^  THE  LAND   LAWS. 

paying  up  of  one  year's  arrears  out  of  his  own  re- 
sources— the  provision  will  doubtless  be  inoperative, 
like  the  Bright  clauses  in  the  law  of  1 870  for  creat- 
ing peasant  proprietary. 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  there  are  perhaps 
six  or  seven  hundred  thousand  agricultural  people 
of  Ireland  excluded  from  the  law,  outside  its  pale. 
It  is  waste  of  time  to  ask  them  to  subrnit  to  it. 
They  want  a  land  law  which  will  include  them. 

It  has  never  been  denied  by  any  reflecting  English 
economist  that  peasant  proprietary  is  the  only  per- 
manent solution  of  the  land  question  in  Ireland,  as 
it  proved  the  only  permanent  solution  of  the  land 
question  in  every  other  country  in  which  it  has 
arisen.  This  law  was  enthusiastically  lauded  as  a 
step  toward  peasant  proprietary.  But,  in  fact,  it  is 
the  very  reverse.  It  is  a  law  for  the  diminution  of 
small  holdings;  it  is  a. law  for  the  preservation  of 
landlordism  ;  it  is  a  law  for  the  extension  of  monop- 
oly in  land. 

The  only  explicit  provision  for  the  purchase  of  the 
land  from  the  landlord  and  its  resale  to  the  tenant 
with  the  aid  of  the  government  is  this  :  If  a  landlord 
wants  to  sell,  and  three-fourths  of  the  tenants  are 
able  and  willing  to  buy,  the  government  may  ad- 
vance a  portion  of  the  purchase-money.  But  on 
how  many  estates  are  such  conditions  likely  to 
arise  ?  The  provision  for  extending  monopoly  in 
land  is  vastly  simpler.  It  is  this :  If  a  tenancy  is 
being  sold,  and  nobody  offers  for  it  a  sum  exceed- 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  437 

ing  the  arrears  of  the  rent,  it  falls  to  the  landlord  as 
the  purchaser.  Many  instances  of  this  kind  will 
occur,  and  have  already  occurred.  In  such  cases 
the  tenant  of  course  receives  nothing  for  the  im- 
provements effected  by  his  own  labor  and  money. 

But  if  a  large  number  of  the  Irish  farmers  and  all 
the  farm-laborers  are  excluded  from  the  benefits  of 
the  law,  it  contains  substantial  advantages  for  those 
who  are  entitled  to  them.  It  secures  the  tenant 
from  capricious  eviction  for  fifteen  years,  provided, 
of  course,  he  pays  his  rent.  Should  another  series 
of  bad  seasons  come  like  those  recently  passed, 
there  is  nothing  in  the  new  law  to  save  the  tenant 
from  eviction,  as  formerly.  All  the  advantages  he 
acquires  under  the  bill  are  contingent  on  good 
harvests.  In  several  of  the  continental  countries  the 
landlord  shares  with  the  tenant  the  profit  or  the  loss 
of  the  harvests.  Had  this  principle  been  incorpo- 
rated in  the  new  law  for  Ireland,  the  mass  of  the 
people  would  have  been  satisfied.  They  would  then 
know  that  if,  through  no  fault  of  their  own,  the  crops 
were  lost  and  the  toil  of  the  year  thrown  away,  they 
were  at  least  certain  of  having  a  roof  under  which 
to  shelter  themselves  and  their  little  ones.  The  new 
Land  Law  contains  no  such  assurance.  It  is  not, 
therefore,  a  permanent  settlement  of  the  land  ques- 
tion in  Ireland;  and  that  question  will  never  be 
settled  until  the  man  who  owns  the  soil  tills  it  and 
lives  by  it. 

The  administration  of  the  law,  with  the  restrictions 


43 8  THE   LAND   LAWS. 

described,  is  entrusted  to  a  commission  of  three, 
with  power  to  appoint  deputies.  This  commission, 
although  at  this  writing  in  session  less  than  a  month, 
has  completely  vindicated  the  assertion  of  the  Land 
League  that  the  Irish  landlords  created  famine  by 
extorting  rack-rents.  More  than  forty  thousand 
applications  by  tenants — whose  aggregate  is  six 
hundred  thousand — have  been  filed  with  the  com- 
missioners under  the  section  providing  that  when 
a  landlord  and  tenant  cannot  agree  on  the  sum  to  be 
paid  as  rent,  either  may  apply  to  the  commission  to 
have  the  rent  fixed ;  and  there  is  no  appeal  from  the 
decision  of  the  commission.  The  rent  fixed  cannot 
be  changed  for  fifteen  years,  nor  can  the  landlord 
during  that  period  evict  the  tenant  if  the  latter  pays 
the  rent.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  tenant  chooses 
to  sell  his  holding,  he  has  the  right  to  do  so,  but  the 
landlord  may  object  to  the  incoming  tenant;  then 
appeal  lies  to  the  land  court.  If  the  tenant  should 
sell  while  owing  rent,  the  claims  of  the  landlord 
must  first  be  paid  out  of  the  proceeds  of  the  sale. 
It  was  rational  on  the  part  of  the  Irish  landlords  to 
urge  the  enactment  of  such  a  law. 

The  action  of  the  commission  up  to  this  time  has 
been  almost  uniformly  in  favor  of  the  tenant.  Rents 
have  been  reduced  materially  In  many  cases  the 
reduction  has  been  twenty-five  per  cent.;  in  some, 
fifty ;  in  the  largest  proportion,  about  fifteen  per  cent. 
This  is  the  complete  vindication  of  the  Land  League. 
The  new  rents  are  not  arbitrarily  fixed.     The  deputy 


THE   LAND   LAWS.  439 

commissioners  visit  the  farm,  and  reach  a  conclusion 
concerning  the  rent  according  to  these  instructions  : 

"  I.  Ascertain  name  and  address  of  landlord  and 
tenant. 

"  2.  The  number  of  acres  tenant  pays  rent  for, 
and  the  rent  per  acre ;  when  and  how  often  in- 
creased. 

"  3.  Find  the  Poor-Law  valuation  on  each  hold- 
ing. 

"4.  The  extent  of  tenant's  improvement,  and 
whether  or  not  the  landlord  contributed  in  any  way 
toward  such  improvement  by  way  of  building  houses, 
offices,  fences,  drainage,  walls,  manures,  supplying 
timber,  slates  for  roofing;  and  if  so,  ascertain  what 
amount  so  advanced  by  landlord,  and  when. 

"  5.  Deduct  all  improvements  made  by  the  tenant, 
and  consider  what  would  be  the  value  of  the  land 
before  these  improvements  were  made.  Then  fix  a 
fair  rent  as  between  landlord  and  tenant,  putting  all 
improvements  out  of  the  reckoning. 

"  6.  In  settling  a  fair  rent  consider  the  situation 
and  conveniences  attaching  to  the  farm,  whether  the 
farm  has  water  on  it ;  has  it  bog  and  meadow  on  it  ? 
If  not,  what  does  it  cost  the  tenant  to  buy  turf,  hay 
and  manure  yearly  for  use  of  his  farm  ?  What  is  the 
distance  from  market  where  farmer  sells  the  produce 
of  his  farm  ?  All  these  items  to  be  considered  in 
fixing  a  fair  rent.  The  valuators  to  be  as  consci- 
entious as  possible,  without  affection  or  favor,  as  it 
may  occur   that   they  should    go    before   the   land 


440  THE   LAND  LAWS, 

commission  court  at  a  future  day  to  substantiate 
their  award. 

"  7.  The  act  of  Parhament  for  your  guidance  runs 
as  follows  (section  8,  sub-section  9) :  *  No  rent  shall 
be  allowable  or  made  payable  in  any  proceedings 
under  this  act  in  respect  of  improvements  made 
by  the  tenant  or  his  predecessor  in  title,  and  for 
which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  court,  the  tenant  or 
his  predecessor  in  title  shall  not  have  been  paid  or 
otherwise  compensated  by  the  landlord  or  his  pred- 
ecessor in  title.' 

"  8.  Therefore  it  is  for  you,  as  impartial  valuators, 
to  value  the  land,  and  the  land  only,  apart  from  all 
improvements.  Keep  out  of  your  valuation  the 
value  of  the  houses,  offices,  and  all  other  improve- 
ments made  by  the  tenants  at  their  own  expenses, 
as  the  landlord  has  no  claim  on  these  improve- 
ments for  rent,  not  having  given  one  penny  toward 
them." 


CHAPTER    XVI. 
WHAT  IS   THE  END    TO  BE? 

THE  Land  League  succeeded  in  averting  famine; 
it  succeeded  in  keeping  down  evictions.  The 
increase  of  the  armed  constabulary  and  the  constant 
pouring  in  of  troops  to  aid  the  landlords  increased 
the  number  of  evictions  in  i88o  to  ten  thousand  four 
hundred  and  fifty-seven  persons,  composing  two  thou- 
sand one  hundred  and  ten  families — a  dreadful  total, 
but  insignificant  compared  with  ninety  thousand  four 
hundred  and  forty  persons  in  the  corresponding  year 
of  the  last  famine.  It  succeeded  in  keeping  Ireland 
quiet,  patient  and  orderly  in  spite  of  starvation  to  in- 
cite them  to  commit  crime  against  property  and  sol- 
diery to  exasperate  them  to  deeds  of  reckless  violence. 
The  command  of  the  League  was,  '*  Break  no  law ;" 
and  it  was  obeyed  with  marvellous  unanimity.  Nu- 
merous outrages  were  reported,  but  investigation 
generally  revealed  that  they  were  the  inventions  of 
enterprising  news-purveyors  or  the  malicious  fabri- 
cations of  base  persons  who  had  a  purpose  to  serve. 
The  landlords,  who  were  driven  to  rage  by  the  with- 
holding of  rents  and  by  the  peaceful  agitation  carried 
on  by  the  Land  League  for  the  establishment  of  peas- 

441 


442  WHAT  IS    THE   END    TO   BE? 

ant  proprietary,  implored  the  government  to  declare 
the  League  illegal  and  suppress  it.  This  could  not 
easily  be  done.  All  its  operations  were  strictly  con- 
stitutional. There  was  but  one  way  to  suppress  it — 
suspend  the  constitution  in  Ireland.  Abolish  per- 
sonal liberty.  Prohibit  free  speech.  Disperse  pub- 
lic assemblies  of  the  people  gathered  to  petition  for 
a  redress  of  grievances.  Imprison  the  leaders.  Then 
the  army  and  the  constabulary  could  be  loosed  to 
drag  the  last  penny  from  the  tenantry  and  at  the 
point  of  the  bayonet  turn  into  the  highways  those 
unable  to  pay. 

As  a  prelude  to  this  policy,  which  Mr.  Forster 
proceeded  to  carry  out,  with  the  assistance  of  the 
greatest  Liberal  minister  England  has  ever  had, 
Mr.  Gladstone,  "  outrage-factories  "  were  established. 
One  day  a  dreadful  story  of  injury  to  cattle  was  re- 
ported ;  investigation  showed  that  it  was  pure  fabri- 
cation. The  next  a  bailiff  was  fired  at;  he  had  hired 
somebody  to  do  it.  A  boy's  suicide  in  the  woods 
was  reported  an  agrarian  crime.  Informers  and  spies 
committed  depredations  and  charged  them  upon  the 
Land  League. 

The  command  of  the  League  was,  "  Break  no  law." 
How  faithfully  that  command  was  obeyed  is  demon- 
strated by  a  comparison  of  the  crimes  committed 
during  the  previous  famine-period  with  those  com- 
mitted while  the  League  controlled  the  people. 
Crime  in  Ireland  has  heretofore  been  largely  reg- 
ulated by  the  conduct  of  the  landlords  and  the  con- 


WBAT  IS    THE   END    TO   BE?  443 

dition  of  the  people  during  partial  or  general  famine. 
A  hungry  man  will  strike  a  blow  or  steal  a  loaf  A 
man  who  sees  his  family  dying  of  hunger  and  want 
and  beholds  the  author  of  their  misery  rolling  by  in 
a  splendid  equipage  is  likely — for  human  nature  is 
the  same  everywhere — to  feel  hatred  and  to  wish  for 
revenge.  In  1847  the  total  number  of  criminal  con- 
victions in  Ireland  v/as  fifteen  thousand  two  hundred 
and  thirty -three ;  in  1879,  while  the  Land  League 
governed  Ireland,  the  total  number  of  crimes  report- 
ed by  the  police  was  nine  hundred  and  seventy-seven. 
In  1847  the  total  was  eighteen  thousand  two  hundred 
and  six;  in  1880,  while  the  Land  League  governed 
Ireland,  the  total  was  only  slightly  in  excess  of  that 
of  the  preceding  year.  In  1848  the  homicides  were 
one  hundred  and  seventy-one,  and  in  the  following 
year  two  hundred  and  three;  in  the  corresponding 
years  of  the  recent  famine  they  were  respectively  five 
and  four.  It  was  thus  that  the  Land  League  gov- 
erned Ireland.  Davitt  had  repeated  the  words  of 
O'Connell :  "  Whoever  commits  a  crime  is  the  enemy 
of  his  country." 

Reasonable  men  would  assume  that  such  an  or- 
ganization would  have  received  the  thanks  of  the 
government  whose  work  it  had  done  so  much  better 
than  the  same  work  could  have  been  done  by  the 
government,  even  if  it  had  tried  in  good  faith  to  do 
it.  But  the  annihilation  of  the  League  was  essential 
to  the  perpetuation  of  the  system  of  landlordism 
which  still  prevails  in  Ireland,  and  the  government 


444  WHAT  IS    THE  END    TO  BE? 

was  on  the  landlord  side.  After  English  opinion  had 
been  sufficiently  drugged,  Ireland  was  declared  to  be 
on  the  verge  of  anarchy,  and  the  Coercion  Bill  was 
passed  early  in  1 88 1.  It  empowered,  nominally  the 
lord-lieutenant,  really  the  secretary,  a  Mr.  Forster, 
an  irresponsible  foreigner  in  Ireland,  to  arrest  and  de- 
tain, at  least  until  the  last  day  of  September,  1882, 
any  number  of  persons  whom  he  might  be  pleased 
to  suspect  of  having  entertained  any  criminal  inten- 
tions before  the  passage  of  the  law  or  after  it.  This 
accomplished  the  complete  destruction  of  liberty  in 
Ireland.  To-day  the  Irish  jails  are  full  of  the  best 
and  purest  of  her  people.  Mr.  Davitt  was  taken  to 
Millbank  prison.  Among  those  now  incarcerated 
are  Mr.  Parnell,  Mr.  Dillon,  Mr.  Brennan,  and  all  the 
officers  and  efficient  supporters  of  the  Land  League 
who  remained  in  Ireland.  The  treasurer,  Mr.  Egan, 
reached  Paris ;  Rev.  Father  Sheehy,  Mr.  Healy  and 
Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor  came  to  America. 

Mr.  Parnell  was  denied  the  privilege  allowed  the 
most  infamous  felons — that  of  having  a  private  in- 
terview with  a  lawyer  for  the  purpose  of  testing  the 
legality  of  his  arrest.  When  Robert  Emmet  was 
about  to  be  tried  for  his  life,  the  English  government 
assigned  him  as  counsel  a  spy  in  the  employment  of 
its  secret-service  bureau  ;  and  every  fact,  ever)^  paper, 
which  he  entrusted  to  this  wretch  was  instantly  con- 
veyed to  the  attorney-general.  Emmet  went  to  the 
scaffold.  The  physician  who  attended  the  prisoners, 
Dr.   Kenny,  who  had  voluntarily   risked  his  life  a 


WHAT  IS   THE   END    TO  BE?  445 

hundred  times  among  the  poor  of  Dublin  during  an 
epidemic,  was  not  only  discharged  from  his  official 
position  as  surgeon  to  one  of  the  public  institutions, 
but  was  arrested,  and  is  also  in  prison,  his  crime  be- 
ing that  he  carried  a  letter  out  of  the  jail.  Miss 
Anna  Parnell,  who  had  organized  the  Ladies'  Land 
Leagues  in  Ireland  for  the  purpose  of  providing  for 
the  families  of  those  members  of  the  League  who 
were  imprisoned,  was  refused  admission  to  her 
brother,  although  it  had  been  publicly  stated  that 
he  was  ill.  All  the  members  of  the  League  were 
subjected  to  the  most  rigorous  regulations,  and  were 
deprived  of  privileges  commonly  allowed  the  mean- 
est malefactors.  Not  one  of  them  had  violated  any 
law  of  the  country.  The  severity  of  their  treatment 
appears  to  have  been  inspired  by  malice  on  the  part 
of  the  English  representatives  of  the  foreign  govern- 
ment on  account  of  the  issuance  from  Kilmainham 
jail  of  what,  with  their  habitual  and  characteristic 
spirit  of  misrepresentation,  the  government  press 
agents  called  a  "no-rent  manifesto."  The  trick  of 
misnaming  the  document  was  so  successful  that  some 
of  the  supporters  of  the  League  were  deceived  by 
it,  and  censured  the  prisoners  on  moral  grounds. 
The  "  no-rent  manifesto  "  was  described  as  an  order 
to  the  farmers  who  were  members  of  the  League  to 
pay  no  rent  at  any  time  or  under  any  circumstances ; 
it  was  denounced  as  communistic.  However  much 
men  may  differ  as  to  the  wisdom  and  policy  of  its 

issuance  at  this  time  (and  the  fact  that  grave  doubts 

!28 


44^  WHAl'  IS   THE  END    TO  BE? 

on  this  point  do  honestly  exist  in  the  minds  of  some 
of  the  warmest  friends  and  most  active  supporters  of 
the  League,  both  before  and  since,  is  not  denied),  it 
is  simply  a  matter  of  fact — which  any  one  who  reads 
the  text  of  the  manifesto  can  ascertain  for  himself — 
that  it  was  simply  an  appeal  to  the  farmers  to  meet 
the  tyranny  of  the  government  in  the  only  way  which 
would  or  could  be  successful — to  withhold  the  rents 
due  until  the  government  restored  the  constitutional 
liberty  of  the  country.  It  was  not  an  order  for  the 
abolition  of  rent,  it  was  precisely  such  a  step  as 
the  American  people  took  when  they  set  up  their 
order  of  "  No  representation,  no  taxation."  The 
leaders  of  the  League  issued  it  only  after  the  gov- 
ernment had  declared  the  League  itself  illegal  and 
forbade  any  meetings  of  its  members  in  public  or 
private.  When  it  is  remembered  that  the  League 
had  saved  the  lives  of  thousands  during  the  famine ; 
had  reduced  the  crime  of  the  country  to  a  minimum  ; 
had  inculcated  the  doctrine  of  resistance  only  by  pas- 
sivity; had  taught  the  people  that  disorder  would 
only  furnish  the  government  with  an  excuse  to  set 
the  soldiery  upon  unarmed  masses,  men,  women  and 
children,  in  the  streets ;  had  counselled  patience, 
self-control,  fortitude  and  strictly  constitutional  ac- 
tion from  the  day  of  the  organization  of  the  League 
until  it  was  proclaimed, — it  is  difficult  to  understand 
what  form  of  agitation  for  the  redress  of  grievances 
which  the  English  ministers  freely  admit  exist  would 
be  tolerated  by  the  English  government  in  Ireland. 


WHAT  IS    THE  END    TO  BE i  447 

After  the  proclamation  declaring  the  League  an 
illegal  body  strange  scenes  were  witnessed.  Al- 
though profound  order  prevailed  throughout  the 
country,  the  constabulary  had  been  increased  and 
thirty-five  thousand  regulars  were  encamped  at  points 
adroitly  selected.  These  men  were  frequently  let 
loose  upon  the  people  to  provoke  them,  and  on  the 
smallest  provocation  they  used  their  swords  and 
bayonets,  as  well  as  balls,  with  deadly  effect,  men, 
women,  and  even  children,  being  their  victims.  On 
one  occasion  the  soldiery,  it  was  charged,  were  made 
drunk  in  order  to  render  them  the  more  savage,  and 
in  their  maudlin  condition  they  committed  gross  out- 
rages. The  civilians  slain  did  not  figure  in  the  press 
reports  sent  over  to  this  country,  but  wherever  a 
civilian,  no  matter  who  he  was  or  what  his  stand- 
ing, committed  the- slightest  breach  of  the  peace,  his 
conduct  was  charged  upon  the  Land  League,  al- 
though he  may  have  been  an  opponent  of  it. 

Even  the  meetings  of  the  ladies'  branches,  which 
were  engaged  in  purely  charitable  work,  were  dis- 
persed by  armed  ruffians.  One  day,  when  the 
women  were  about  to  assemble,  the  constabulary 
ordered  them  to  disperse.  There  was  no  alterna- 
tive ;  but  the  head  of  the  society  said  to  her  asso- 
ciates, "  Since  we  cannot  work  for  those  who  are  in 
need,  at  least  we  can  pray  for  them,"  and  they  march- 
ed in  a  body  to  the  nearest  church,  knelt  around  the 
altar  and  said  the  rosary  while  the  officers,  uniformed 
and  armed,  waited  outside.   This  incident  did  not  oc- 


44^  WHAT  IS    THE   END    TO   BEi 

cur  in  France  during  the  days  of  the  Revolution ;  it 
occurred  in  Ireland  in  the  month  of  October,  i88i. 
On  another  occasion,  when  the  ladies  were  ordered 
to  disperse,  and  were  about  to  do  so,  a  Catholic 
priest  demanded  the  authority  of  the  officer.  The 
reply  being  unsatisfactory,  the  priest  told  the  ladies 
to  adjourn  to  his  house  and  hold  their  meeting  there. 
They  did  so ;  the  priest,  unarmed  and  gentle,  stood 
on  the  threshold,  and  the  constabulary  quietly  dis- 
appeared, respecting,  without  knowing  why,  per- 
haps, the  ancient  right  of  asylum  in  the  sanc- 
tuary. 

The  spirit  of  charity  and  mutual  support  which 
the  League  fostered  is  without  parallel  in  the  history 
of  peaceful  revolutions.  Not  only  were  the  starving 
fed,  not  only  were  the  evicts  provided  with  shelter 
and  clothing  and  the  necessaries  of  life,  but  the 
temper  of  the  people  was  softened ;  all  animosities, 
no  matter  how  venerable  their  origin,  were  laid 
away,  to  be  for  ever,  let  us  hope,  forgotten.  The 
families  of  those  who  were  arrested  were  daily 
visited ;  the  crops  belonging  to  the  suspects  were 
harvested  by  volunteers,  men  and  women  marching 
cheerily  many  miles  with  the  necessary  outfit  for 
the  task  so  willingly  performed.  The  practice  of 
"  boycotting  "  was  consistently  carried  on — in  many 
cases,  into  the  region  of  the  quaint  and  ludicrous. 
But  the  first  command  of  the  League,  "  Break  no 
law,"  was  obeyed  with  remarkable  docility.  There 
were    crimes,   indeed,   committed    during    the   two 


WHAT  IS    THE   END    TO  BE?  449 

years  of  the  League's  life,  but  they  were  inconsider- 
able in  number,  as  already  sufficiently  shown,  and 
there  has  been  no  serious  attempt,  even  by  the  gov- 
ernment, to  place  the  direct  responsibility  for  them 
on  the  League. 

Organized  for  a  moral,  humane  and  righteous 
purpose ;  led  by  men  of  the  highest  personal  cha- 
racter ;  directed  by  methods  strictly  constitutional ; 
the  promoter  of  peace,  order,  patience;  the  victor 
over  famine;  the  harmonizer  of  all  classes  of  the 
population  and  the  distinct  organ  of  the  national 
sentiment, — the  Irish  National  Land  League  was 
proclaimed  illegal  by  the  English  government  in 
Ireland  and  suppressed  by  force.  Its  foremost  men 
are  imprisoned,  unaccused,  untried,  their  persons  in 
the  custody  of  an  irresponsible  foreigner  who  hates 
them  and  oppresses  their  countrymen.  All  liberty 
in  Ireland  is  dead.  The  world  may  well  look  in 
astonishment  upon  such  a  spectacle  in  a  time  of 
profound  tranquillity,  and  in  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  which  has  beheld  the  enlightening  advance 
of  constitutional  freedom  in  every  other  part  of  the 
globe. 

But,  happily  for  the  Irish  people,  the  irresponsi- 
ble foreigner  who  has  extinguished  liberty  in  Ireland 
has  no  jurisdiction  beyond  her  sad  sea-shore.  Five 
millions  of  the  Irish  people  in  Ireland  may  be  de- 
prived of  constitutional  rights ;  twenty  millions  of 
the  Irish  people  in  the  United  States,  in  Australia 
and  in  Canada  are  free.     They  know  that  there  can 


45 O  WHAT  IS   THE  END    TO  BE? 

never  be  happiness  or  prosperity  in  their  motherland 
until  her  laws  are  made  by  her  own  people  on  her 
own  soil.  They  know  that  until  the  people  of  Ire- 
land again  own  the  land  which  was  their  fathers' 
there  can  be  no  thrift  there.  The  agitation  which  is 
stilled  for  the  moment  in  Ireland  will  be  heard  again ; 
and  it  is  not  stilled  in  any  other  part  of  the  earth 
where  human  hearts  beat  with  sympathy  for  justice, 
freedom  and  the  inalienable  right  of  every  nation  to 
regulate  its  own  affairs  and  shape  its  own  destiny. 
England  has  accorded  to  all  her  other  dependencies 
this  right.  She  withholds  it  from  Ireland,  and  her 
statesmen  affirm  that  Ireland  will  never  obtain  it. 
But  English  statesmen  and  English  monai-chs  have 
made  such  affirmations  often  before  and  recalled 
them  afterward,  "  Never,"  declares  the  eloquent 
bishop  of  Peoria,  John  Lancaster  Spalding,  "  never 
— and  I  am  in  my  inmost  soul  convinced  of  what 
I  say — never  has  England  done  an  act  of  justice  or 
of  reparation  to  Ireland  from  noble  or  humane 
motives.  I  do  not  in  my  heart  believe  that  the 
average  English  public  opinion  holds  now  that  the 
Irish  are  worthy  of  justice  or  mercy,  of  leniency." . 

The  record  of  English  concessions  to  Ireland  is 
this : 

I.  Independence  of  the  Irish  Parliament  in  1782. 
But  there  were  eighty  thousand  armed  Irish  volun- 
teers then,  and  not  a  regiment  of  English  troops 
in  Ireland.  They  were  all  out  in  America  trying  to 
keep  the  king's  word  that  he  would  spend  his  last 


WHAT  IS   THE  END    TO  BE?  45 1 

shilling  before  he  would  concede  the  smallest  priv- 
ilege to  the  American  rebels.  He  kept  his  word: 
he  did  not  concede  the  smallest  privilege.  But  the 
American  rebels  wrested  from  him  the  right  for 
ever  to  make  their  own  privileges.  In  that  dreadful 
situation,  England  could  not  pass  coercion  bills  in 
Ireland,  imprison  Grattan,  hang  eighty  thousand 
Irish  volunteers,  suppress  free  speech  and  deny  the 
people  the  right  of  peaceably  meeting  to  petition  for 
a  redress  of  grievances.  "  The  wild  shout  of  liberty 
was  echoed  across  the  ocean,"  says  Bishop  Spalding. 
England  had  no  alternative  but  to  concede  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  Irish  Parliament.  When  her  de- 
feated troops  returned  from  victorious  America,  she 
sent  them  over  into  Ireland  and  abolished  the  Irish 
Parliament. 

2.  Catholic  emancipation  was  the  next  conces- 
sion. 

The  king  had  sworn  that  he  would  die  rather  than 
sign  the  bill.  Wellington  told  him  that  if  it  were 
not  passed  there  would  be  insurrection  in  Ireland. 
He  signed  it. 

3.  The  abolition  of  the  foreign  State-Church  in 
Ireland  was  the  next  concession.  But  Gladstone 
has  declared  it  was  Fenianism  which  made  that 
necessary. 

The  demands  which  are  made  now  are  two : 
Peasant  proprietary  and  home  rule.  History  will 
yet  record  the  day  on  which  both  shall  have 
been  obtained. 


INDEX. 


Abolition  of  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment, 70. 

Absenteeism,  100. 

Address  of  the  Continental  Con- 
gress to  the  Ii-ish  people,  65. 

Administration  of  the  new  Land 
Law,  438,  439. 

Advantages  of  English  govern- 
ment in  Ireland  for  six  hundred 
years,  57. 

Agrarian  crime,  443. 

All  the  benefits  of  the  new  Land 
Law  for  the  tenant  contingent 
on  the  harvests,  437, 

American  Congress  receives  Mr. 
Parnell,  384. 

An  Orangeman  proposes  O'Con- 
nell  for  Parliament,  373. 

Armed  constabulary,  183. 

Arrears  of  rent  exclude  from  the 
benefits  of  the  Land  Law  of 
1881,  435. 

B. 

Benefit  of  the  American  war, 
70. 


Benefits  of  the  Land  Act  of  1881 
for  Irish  landlords,  436 ;  beh- 
efits  for  the  tenant,  437. 

Between  six  hundred  thousand 
and  seven  hundred  thousand 
agriculturists  excluded  from  the 
benefits  of  the  Land  Law  of 
1 88 1,  436. 

Blackstone  on  laws  against  na- 
ture, 146. 

"  Boycotting,"  389-394,  448. 

Bright,  John,  opinion  of  Irish 
industry,  60. 


Can  Ireland  feed  the  population  ? 

400. 
Carew,    George,    civilizing     the 

Irish,  47. 
Catholic  emancipation,  89. 
Coercion  Act,  182. 
Coercion  bills,  nature  of,  403, 444; 

number   of,  in    eighty    years, 

404. 
Command  of  the  Land  League, 

''  Break  no  law,"  441. 
Commissioners     of     the      Land 
453 


454 


INDEX. 


League  to  the  United  States, 

z'^z,  444. 

Comparison  of  crime  in  Phil- 
adelphia with  crime  in  Ii-eland 
in  1879,  409;  in  1880,  434. 

"  Compensation  for-  Disturbance 
Bill,"  422,  429. 

Confiscations  of  land,  40. 

Conservative  elements  in  favor 
of  the  Land  League,  366,  444. 

Contrast  between  England  and 
Ireland,  27-29, 

Crime  in  Ireland,  England,  Scot- 
land and  Philadelphia,  405, 
406,  409,  410, 

Crime  in  Ireland  less  than  that 
of  England  and  Scotland,  404, 
410;  statistical  table,  405. 

Criminal  convictions  in  England, 
Scotland  and  Ireland  from  i860 
to  1879,  inclusive,  405. 

Cromwell  civilizes  Ireland,  47, 
48. 

Crops,  Irish,  could  be  seized 
while  growing,  424. 

Crowbars,  muskets  and  evictions, 
424. 

D. 

Davitt,  Michael,  309  et  seq  ;  ad- 
vice to  the  tenants,  382, 

Decline  of  crime  in  Ireland,  406. 

Decrease  of  population  in  Ire- 
land, 396. 

Destruction  of  personal  liberty  in 
Ireland,  444. 

Devoy,  John,  letter  of,  341  et  seq. 

Difference   between   landlordism 


in  the  United  States  and  Ire- 
land, 34. 

Difficulties  in  the  way  of  suppress- 
ing the  Land  League,  442. 

Dillon,  John  Blake  and  John,  356 
et  seq. 

iDoyle  on  Irish  landlordism  fifty 
years  ago,  197. 

Drogheda  women  in  the  church- 
steeple,  51. 

Dying  in  the  ditches,  47. 


E. 

Earl  of  Leitrim,  238-243. 

Education  in  Ireland,  110-135. 

Effect  of  English  society  on 
Irishmen,  350,  351. 

Efforts  to  revive  Irish  manufac- 
tures, 78. 

Eighteen  years  of  Home  Rule, 
71,  72. 

Emancipation  of  the  Catholics, 
414. 

Emigration,  195  ;  from  Ireland 
from  1841  to   1879,  395. 

Emmet  and  Parnell,  444. 

Encumbered  Estates  Act,  415, 
416. 

England  abandoned  the  South 
after  robbing  it,  432. 

English  falsification  of  affairs  in 
Ireland  for  effect  in  America, 
434;  landlords  voluntarily  re- 
duce rents,  199. 

Evictions,  196,  202,  226,  232- 
235,  380*  381. 


INDEX. 


455 


Excess  of  crime  in  England  and 
Scotland  over  that  in  Ireland, 

405. 
Excluded  from  the  provisions  of 

the  Land  Law  of  1 88 1,  434. 
Exports  and  imports,  76,  399. 
Extreme      nationalists      suppor^ 

Land  League,  375. 

F. 

Factories  in  Ireland,  76. 

Fair  conduct  of  the  land  com- 
mission, 438. 

Famine  and  crime,  443. 

Famine  recommended  by  Eng- 
lishmen, 46,  191 ;  artificial,  not 
natural,  137,  184,  238;  horrors 
of,  185  et  seq. 

Fed  by  charity  in  1880,  205. 

Final  arrest  of  the  Land-League 
leaders,  444. 

First  measure  passed  for  the  re- 
lief of  the  Irish  tenant,  412, 
414. 

Fixity  of  tenure  for  fifteen  years, 

437. 
Food    exported    during    famine, 

187,  399- 

Foundation  of  landlordism,  41. 

Four  hundred  thousand  agricul- 
tural laborers  excluded  from 
the  Land  Lavi'  of  1881,  434. 

Freeman,  the  English  historian, 
writes  a  book  not  now  on  sale, 

431- 
From    Essex    to    Shirley,    200, 
201. 


Froude  on  land-owning,  141, 
146. 

Qc. 

Gladstone  and  peasant  propri- 
etary, 426;  defines  "eviction," 
429 ;  on  the  North  and  the 
South  during  the  civil  war, 
431 ;  Land  Law  of  1870,  419, 
420. 

Grattan,  Henry,  69,  105,  106, 
109. 


"  Hold  the  rent,"  382. 
Home  Rule  allowed   all  British 
dependencies    except    Ireland, 

79- 
Homes  of  the  tenantry,  138. 
Homicides  in  Philadelphia   and 

in   Ireland    in    1 879,   409;    in 

1880,  434. 


Immediate  execution  of  eject- 
ment writs,  424, 

Imports  and  exports,  76. 

Increase  of  population  in  Eng- 
land and  Scotland,  decrease  in 
Ireland,  396. 

Instructions  given  to  subcommis- 
sioners  under  the  Land  Act  of 
1881,  439. 

Ireland  :  Area,  33  ;  population, 
2i2i ;  exports  food  while  she 
famishes,  399. 

Irish  landlords  have  privileges 
denied  English  landlords,  424. 


456 


INDEX, 


Irish  national  Parliament,  81-190. 
*'  Is  patriotism  dead  in  Ireland  ?" 
John  Bright,  413. 


Ladies'  Land  Leagues,  384. 

Land  Act  of  1881  a  repetition  of 
that  of  1870;  not  understood 
in  the  United  States,  430. 

Land  League  proclaimed  to  en- 
able the  landlords  to  collect 
rack-rents  and  evict,  441,  442. 

Landlords  cheat  the  tenants  out 
of  the  benefit  of  the  act  of 
1870,  426,  435. 

Land-owners  in  Ireland,  number 
of,  136. 

Lawful  to  kill  the  "  meer  Irish," 

45- 
Laws  for  the  relief  of  the  Irish 

tenant  down  to  1881,  422,  425, 

426 ;  to  enlarge  the  privileges 

of  Irish  landlords,  425. 
Lease-holders  excluded  from  the 

benefits  of  the  Land  Law  of 

1881,  434. 
Liberty,  personal,  destroyed,  444, 

449. 
Life   in  a  model  British  prison, 

324-341. 

M. 

Malby  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  44. 

Management  of  great  estates  in 
England,  147. 

**  Manchester  Three,"  the,  351. 

Manufactures,  adaptation  of  Ire- 
land for,  58;  suppression  of,  60. 


Misrepresentation  of  American 
news  and  opinion  in  England, 

375.431- 
Misunderstanding  the  Land  Act 
of  1 88 1  in  the  United  States, 

430- 

Mitch  el,  John,  186. 

Monopoly  of  land  perpetuated 
by  the  Land  Law  of  1881, 
136. 

Mothei  and  son.  Lady  Wilde  and 
Oscar  Wilde,  351. 

Mourning  in  England  for  Pres- 
ident Lincoln  and  for  President 
Garfield,  432,  433. 

N. 

New  Land  Law  not  a  permanent 
settlement  of  the  Irish  ques- 
tion, 437. 

No  manufactures  possible  in  Ire- 
land under  present  system  of 
land  tenure,  152. 

'•  No-rent  manifesto,"  445,  446. 

Notice  to  quit,  382. 

Number  of  persons  employed  in 
textile  industries,  75 ;  of  Irish 
in  other  countries,  449. 

o. 

Oath  of  supremacy,  44. 

Objects    of  the    Land    League, 

305. 
O'Connell's  error,  414. 
Official  organization  of  the  Land 

League  in  Dublin,  363. 


INDEX. 


457 


Orangeism,  object  of,  84. 
Organization  of  the  Land  League 

in  the  United  States,  384. 
Origin  of  title  to  the  land,  51. 
«  Outrage-factories  "  established, 

442. 
Owners   of   the   soil   shipped  as 

slaves,  46,    51;    compelled   to 

fight  in  Sweden,  46. 


P. 

Parliament,  the  Irish,  36. 

Parnell,  Sir  John,  98,  100 ; 
Charles  Stewart,  355  et  seq ; 
denied  privileges  allowed 
meanest  malefactors,  444. 

Peasant-farmer,  condition  of,  in 
Holland,  154-158;  in  France, 
159-164;  in  Prussia,  164-168; 
in  Russia,  168,  169;  in  India, 
169-181. 

Peasant  proprietary  proposed  by 
John  Bright,  413. 

Peculiarities  of  Irish  landlord- 
ism, 183-236. 

Penal  code,  52-56. 

Pledge  given  to  Ireland  by  Eng- 
land in  1800,  404. 

"  Poor  Law  "  in  England  and  Ire- 
land, 424. 

Population,  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  396;  to  the  square 
mile  :  Belgium,  400  ;  Bavaria, 
402;  Switzerland,  402. 

Potato  crop  an  index  to  famine, 
580 ;  value  of,  380. 


Powers   of  the   laud  court,  437, 

438- 

Poynings's  law,  89. 

Presbyterians  democratic,  84; 
not  Protestants,  84. 

"  Priest  in  politics,"  366. 

Primogeniture  and  entail  abol- 
ished in  Ireland,  415,  416. 

Principle  of  English  legislation 
concerning  Irish  manufactures, 
62. 

Professor  Cairn es  on  Encumbered 
Estates  Act,  416,  419. 

Proportion  of  convictions  to  ar- 
rests in  England,  Scotland  and 
Ireland,  406. 

Protestant  Irish  patriots,  69 ;  in- 
surrections, 371. 

R. 

Recent  theatrical  display  of 
mourning  at  the  English  court, 

■   433- 

Record  of    English    concessions 

to  Ireland,  451. 
Redpath,  James,  202, 
Religious    discord   fomented   by 

the  English  government,  369. 
Rent,  definition  of,  by  Mill  and 

Cairnes,  141. 
Representation     of    Ireland     in 

British  Parliament,  70. 
Restoration  of  Irish  trade  by  the 

Irish  Parliament,  69. 
Restrictions    on  Irish  trade   and 

commerce,  63,  64. 
Reward  of  Dr.  Kenny,  444,  445 


458 


INDEX. 


S. 

Scotch  and  Irish  crime  compared, 

406. 
Sectarianism  an  English  policy  in 

Ireland,  372,  373. 
Seed  of  the  Land  League,  237- 

303. 
Serious    offences    committed    in 

England,  Scotland  and  Wales, 

410. 
Ships,  Irish,  swept  from  the  seas, 

63. 

Six   hundred    thousand    agricul- 
tural tenants  in  Ireland,  438. 
Soldiery  made  drunk,  447. 
Specimen  rack-rents,  289. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  son  of,  evicted, 

51- 

Spy  assigned  as  counsel  for  Robert 
Emmet,  444. 

Strange  scenes,  447-449. 

Sullivan,  A.  M.,  187. 

Suppression  of  correct  informa- 
tion about  Irish  land   tenure, 

423- 
Sympathy  of  the  Irish  with  the 
American  Revolution,  65,  87. 


Table  showing  population  and 
crime  in  England,  Scotland 
and  Ireland,  406. 

Taxation,  217. 

Tenant  in  Ireland  required  to 
care  for  crop  after  seizure,  424. 

Tenants  make  all  the  improve- 
ments, 146. 


Terms  of  the  Land  Act  of  188 1 
concerning  peasant  proprietary, 
436,  437- 

The  Land  League  not  commu- 
nistic or  confiscatory,  381. 

Thirty- two  Uws  for  the  benefit  of 
Irish  landlords,  425. 

Tithes,  370. 

Titles  to  land  no  better,  morally, 
in   England   than   in  Ireland, 

423. 

Trade,  Irish,  with  foreign  coun- 
tries suppressed,  65. 

True  settlement  of  the  Irish  ques- 
tion, 437. 

Turnips,  parsnips  and  ti-ansporta- 
tion,  190. 

U. 

Ulster  tenant-right  defined,  420, 
421. 

"  Undertakers,"  English  and 
acotch,  41;  "Articles"  con- 
cerning, 43. 

United  States,  origin  of  Land 
League  in,  336. 

V. 

"  Vagrant  rays  of  ministerial  sun- 
shine," 66. 
Volunteers  of  1782,  70,  71,  88. 

■w. 

What  form  of  movement  for  re- 
dress of  grievances  will  the 
English  government  tolerate  in 
Ireland  ?  446. 


INDEX. 


459 


"  Whoever  commits  a   crime   is 
the    enemy   of    his    country," 

443- 
Why    Ireland    cannot   feed    her 

people,  402. 
Why  the   Irish    Parliament   was 

abolished,  72. 


Why  the  Conservative  peers  vo 
ted  far  the  Land  Aet  of  1881, 

430- 
Why   we    get   no   skilled    labor 

from  Ireland,  61. 
Wilson,  John,  314. 


THE    END. 


h 


